6 ms·

That quote was Russian observations on their securing valuable technical information, but lamenting on their inability to overcome their capability gap through

by Hilift 2y ago

That quote was Russian observations on their securing valuable technical information, but lamenting on their inability to overcome their capability gap through spying due to changes in tactics of their "main adversary". In WW2, a major factor for the US Naval success in the Pacific was a change in attack doctrine. Aircraft would attack relentlessly from multiple directions, overwhelming the Japanese defenses. In the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, when Australian and US pilots mauled a Japanese supply convoy with Bristol Beaufighter aircraft. In the battle, aircraft fake a torpedo run, the ships changed course to align with the aircraft and minimize the attack surface, then they were strafed with the four 20 mm cannons. The air campaign in the Pacific was much more vicious and effective than Europe. One of the pilots quoted "They went in and hit this troop ship. What I saw looked like little sticks, maybe a foot long or something like that, or splinters flying up off the deck of ship; they'd fly all around ... and twist crazily in the air and fall out in the water. Then I realized what I was watching were human beings. I was watching hundreds of those Japanese just blown off the deck by those machine guns. They just splintered around the air like sticks in a whirlwind and they'd fall in the water." The Russians have difficulty adapting their tactics on the field. Reviewing the successes of the US battles must be quite different than throwing bodies at a front line.

InDubioProRubio 2y ago
[flagged]
- gambiting 2y ago
  Why would such a person be anywhere near the front line?
  - stainablesteel 2y ago
    because their family has been doing it for generations and they keep winning
    - chipdart 2y ago
      > (...) and they keep winning That's the textbook definition of survivorship bias. It's like a lottery winner boasting about his winning strategy that everyone else is just not able to learn.
      - bumby 2y ago
        I read the OP differently. I think there can be many angles to a person's identity makeup and they don't always cohere perfectly. A person can have their identity in "entrepreneurial libertarian" while also having it as "someone who comes from a family valuing military service". Humans aren't always perfectly rational when it comes to their different values/tribal identities. There are a lot of people who join the military while simultaneously "hate authority" for example.
        chipdart 2y ago
        My answer was not touching on the topic of identity. I'm referring to the relationship between cause ad effect.
        bumby 2y ago
        That is still downstream of the question of “why would someone make such a [seemingly contradictory] decision.” The person you replied to is misunderstanding the OP, which they later clarified. My point is understanding outcome causality doesn’t necessarily have to even enter the decision.
      - bluGill 2y ago
        At what point do we conclude the lottery isn't as random as they claim if one person keeps winning. Statistically someone will win, there are good odds someone will win twice, but the odds of anyone winning 3 times is almost zero.
        chipdart 2y ago
        > At what point do we conclude the lottery isn't as random as they claim if one person keeps winning. The whole thing about survivorship bias is that you make a critical failure in analysis when confusing partial observations of post-facto results with causality.
- ajuc 2y ago
  It works the exact opposite way. People from totalitarian shitholes improvise a lot more than people from functioning democracies (because they have to improvise to survive daily life). And they trust their state and follow the rules a lot less (and for a good reason - their state exploits and lies to them to a degree you can't imagine living in a free country). USA wouldn't send its army to Mexico with 12 hours of fuel telling the soldiers it's exercises. After selling half the fuel and ammo on black market and providing them with faulty non-spec tires so that significant percentage of their vehicles just broke the first week it actually had to drive somewhere. Russian army did all of the above, on a massive scale. Nobody in Russia was surprised except maybe putin. IMHO he was more surprised that Ukraine was organized than that his own army wasn't. Think for a while how you'd adapt to living in such a society. One of the first things is that you pretend to do what they tell you and then completely ignore it and do whatever you can to survive. And then to adapt to that - the army has units that shoot at you from behind if you don't want to be a "meat wave" in the next frontal attack. Army won't provide you shoes your size? Steal. Army won't provide you drones or anti-drone measures? Cope cages and loot Mavics from malls. Etc. In totalitarian countries (and I've lived in one so I'd know) everybody had to learn DIY cause you couldn't trust the economy/country to provide you with the things you need. Oligarchy and libertarianism is the same system, just looking from POV of rulers vs ruled. When society doesn't work people have to be libertarians. When everybody's a libertarian - oligarchs rule and society doesn't work.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    You nailed it. Lack of social solidarity and communal trust has got to be a kiss of death in wartime. Especially when fighting against an opponent who has it in spades. (US in Vietnam, Russia in early days of the war in Ukraine, etc.).
  - whatshisface 2y ago
    That is all true, except there's another reason people learn to DIY. That is when they have a basically functional government and economy but live in a rural area. The US libertarian ethos stems from a cultural memory of pioneers and farmers that couldn't be served by a centralized state.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  You’ve never been through boot camp, huh. Such a person would have an unbelievably unpleasant time until: - The military sent them home, - They cracked and sent themselves home, or - They got over themselves and learned how to be part of the larger whole. Making it through with those edge opinions intact is not an option.
  - Tanoc 2y ago
    That wasn't really true during World War II. Some of the most celebrated veterans of that war were anti-authority as hell, doing things like stealing parts of fellow aircrews' planes to rebuild their own, ignoring formation to get better torpedo angles, and running ahead of everyone else in a tank. In Korea that attitude still survived, but only in the air, and by the end of the Vietnam war it had basically been stamped out. The U.S. military since about 1972 is way less lenient than before then, especially as the equipment's gotten more expensive.
    - rascul 2y ago
      > stealing parts of fellow aircrews' planes to rebuild their own US Army still does that today to some extent (not with planes anymore though). It's not stealing, they're just getting their stuff back.
  - marcuskane2 2y ago
    You should listen to interviews with special operations folks. Navy Seals, Green Berets, Delta Force, etc. There is a strong culture of do what's needed to accomplish the mission. Even a "if you're not cheating, you're not trying" to many challenges. HN has a curiously strong hatred of libertarians (although also professing to dislike authoritarians?) so it's not surprising the comment got downvoted though.
- pc86 2y ago
  You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
HPsquared 2y ago
It's probably also in contrast to their previous adversary, the Germans.
jalla 2y ago
The major factor in winning the Pacific battles was code breaking the Japanese communications. Doctrine doesn't matter when you know what the enemy is doing or planning.
- whythre 2y ago
  That is crazy reductive to the point of ignorance. Doctrine does matter. You might know what your enemy is doing but if you fight wrong, even with foreknowledge, you will not win.
  - woooooo 2y ago
    For one important example, the battle of Midway was a close thing even with the intelligence they had. Execution matters.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  The problem with code breaking is that you can't benefit from it too much because your enemy will realise you're reading their messages and change their practices. For this reason the allies had to let convoys be hit sometimes, because they couldn't always be too suspiciously at the right place at the right time. Luckily the German confidence in Enigma was so high that their top leaders ignored reports of enigma being broken, they thought it literally impossible. I'm not sure how this played out in the Japanese war. But the point remains. You can't use signals intelligence too much unless it's literally ending the war in a couple of days.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    Onboard radar (cavity magnetron, later adapted to the microwave oven) was another pivotal technology in the battle of the Atlantic.
timcobb 2y ago
In my opinion, the Russians are quite tactically adaptive. The current war has seen tit-for-tat adaptation between both sides. The Russians don't/can't invest resources in not losing personnel. It's not a priority for them.
- sgjohnson 2y ago
  > In my opinion, the Russians are quite tactically adaptive. But they aren't. They just added Iranian drones to their arsenal.
  - timcobb 2y ago
    The war evolves every day... Russia has upgraded those Iranian drones themselves many times, including just this week introducing a variant with a thermobaric warhead. There is a constant tit-for-tat with electronic warfare devices and drones, with armaments, with how radar stations positions are identified, the routes the drones take to uncover additional targets etc. The tactical play is pretty endless. I'm not sure how you would reduce it to "they bought some drones from Iran."

by Hilift 2y ago

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

[flagged]

gambiting 2y ago
Why would such a person be anywhere near the front line?
- stainablesteel 2y ago
  because their family has been doing it for generations and they keep winning
  - chipdart 2y ago
    > (...) and they keep winning That's the textbook definition of survivorship bias. It's like a lottery winner boasting about his winning strategy that everyone else is just not able to learn.
    - bumby 2y ago
      I read the OP differently. I think there can be many angles to a person's identity makeup and they don't always cohere perfectly. A person can have their identity in "entrepreneurial libertarian" while also having it as "someone who comes from a family valuing military service". Humans aren't always perfectly rational when it comes to their different values/tribal identities. There are a lot of people who join the military while simultaneously "hate authority" for example.
      - chipdart 2y ago
        My answer was not touching on the topic of identity. I'm referring to the relationship between cause ad effect.
        bumby 2y ago
        That is still downstream of the question of “why would someone make such a [seemingly contradictory] decision.” The person you replied to is misunderstanding the OP, which they later clarified. My point is understanding outcome causality doesn’t necessarily have to even enter the decision.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      At what point do we conclude the lottery isn't as random as they claim if one person keeps winning. Statistically someone will win, there are good odds someone will win twice, but the odds of anyone winning 3 times is almost zero.
      - chipdart 2y ago
        > At what point do we conclude the lottery isn't as random as they claim if one person keeps winning. The whole thing about survivorship bias is that you make a critical failure in analysis when confusing partial observations of post-facto results with causality.
ajuc 2y ago
It works the exact opposite way. People from totalitarian shitholes improvise a lot more than people from functioning democracies (because they have to improvise to survive daily life). And they trust their state and follow the rules a lot less (and for a good reason - their state exploits and lies to them to a degree you can't imagine living in a free country). USA wouldn't send its army to Mexico with 12 hours of fuel telling the soldiers it's exercises. After selling half the fuel and ammo on black market and providing them with faulty non-spec tires so that significant percentage of their vehicles just broke the first week it actually had to drive somewhere. Russian army did all of the above, on a massive scale. Nobody in Russia was surprised except maybe putin. IMHO he was more surprised that Ukraine was organized than that his own army wasn't. Think for a while how you'd adapt to living in such a society. One of the first things is that you pretend to do what they tell you and then completely ignore it and do whatever you can to survive. And then to adapt to that - the army has units that shoot at you from behind if you don't want to be a "meat wave" in the next frontal attack. Army won't provide you shoes your size? Steal. Army won't provide you drones or anti-drone measures? Cope cages and loot Mavics from malls. Etc. In totalitarian countries (and I've lived in one so I'd know) everybody had to learn DIY cause you couldn't trust the economy/country to provide you with the things you need. Oligarchy and libertarianism is the same system, just looking from POV of rulers vs ruled. When society doesn't work people have to be libertarians. When everybody's a libertarian - oligarchs rule and society doesn't work.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  You nailed it. Lack of social solidarity and communal trust has got to be a kiss of death in wartime. Especially when fighting against an opponent who has it in spades. (US in Vietnam, Russia in early days of the war in Ukraine, etc.).
- whatshisface 2y ago
  That is all true, except there's another reason people learn to DIY. That is when they have a basically functional government and economy but live in a rural area. The US libertarian ethos stems from a cultural memory of pioneers and farmers that couldn't be served by a centralized state.
kstrauser 2y ago
You’ve never been through boot camp, huh. Such a person would have an unbelievably unpleasant time until: - The military sent them home, - They cracked and sent themselves home, or - They got over themselves and learned how to be part of the larger whole. Making it through with those edge opinions intact is not an option.
- Tanoc 2y ago
  That wasn't really true during World War II. Some of the most celebrated veterans of that war were anti-authority as hell, doing things like stealing parts of fellow aircrews' planes to rebuild their own, ignoring formation to get better torpedo angles, and running ahead of everyone else in a tank. In Korea that attitude still survived, but only in the air, and by the end of the Vietnam war it had basically been stamped out. The U.S. military since about 1972 is way less lenient than before then, especially as the equipment's gotten more expensive.
  - rascul 2y ago
    > stealing parts of fellow aircrews' planes to rebuild their own US Army still does that today to some extent (not with planes anymore though). It's not stealing, they're just getting their stuff back.
- marcuskane2 2y ago
  You should listen to interviews with special operations folks. Navy Seals, Green Berets, Delta Force, etc. There is a strong culture of do what's needed to accomplish the mission. Even a "if you're not cheating, you're not trying" to many challenges. HN has a curiously strong hatred of libertarians (although also professing to dislike authoritarians?) so it's not surprising the comment got downvoted though.
pc86 2y ago
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

HPsquared 2y ago

It's probably also in contrast to their previous adversary, the Germans.

jalla 2y ago

The major factor in winning the Pacific battles was code breaking the Japanese communications. Doctrine doesn't matter when you know what the enemy is doing or planning.

whythre 2y ago
That is crazy reductive to the point of ignorance. Doctrine does matter. You might know what your enemy is doing but if you fight wrong, even with foreknowledge, you will not win.
- woooooo 2y ago
  For one important example, the battle of Midway was a close thing even with the intelligence they had. Execution matters.
wkat4242 2y ago
The problem with code breaking is that you can't benefit from it too much because your enemy will realise you're reading their messages and change their practices. For this reason the allies had to let convoys be hit sometimes, because they couldn't always be too suspiciously at the right place at the right time. Luckily the German confidence in Enigma was so high that their top leaders ignored reports of enigma being broken, they thought it literally impossible. I'm not sure how this played out in the Japanese war. But the point remains. You can't use signals intelligence too much unless it's literally ending the war in a couple of days.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Onboard radar (cavity magnetron, later adapted to the microwave oven) was another pivotal technology in the battle of the Atlantic.

timcobb 2y ago

In my opinion, the Russians are quite tactically adaptive. The current war has seen tit-for-tat adaptation between both sides. The Russians don't/can't invest resources in not losing personnel. It's not a priority for them.

sgjohnson 2y ago
> In my opinion, the Russians are quite tactically adaptive. But they aren't. They just added Iranian drones to their arsenal.
- timcobb 2y ago
  The war evolves every day... Russia has upgraded those Iranian drones themselves many times, including just this week introducing a variant with a thermobaric warhead. There is a constant tit-for-tat with electronic warfare devices and drones, with armaments, with how radar stations positions are identified, the routes the drones take to uncover additional targets etc. The tactical play is pretty endless. I'm not sure how you would reduce it to "they bought some drones from Iran."