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In chapter 11 of All Quiet on the Western Front Paul and his unit find an abandoned food cache in the middle of no mans land. Instead of secreting away the food
by Balgair 6mo ago
In chapter 11 of All Quiet on the Western Front Paul and his unit find an abandoned food cache in the middle of no mans land. Instead of secreting away the food back to their lines where they will have to share it, they decide to just cook and eat it right then and there. But a spotter plane from the allies sees the smoke and then begins shelling their position. Cue a terrifying, if hilarious, scene where the soldiers try and cook pancakes as shells explode around them. Paul, as the last to leave, takes his pancakes on a plate and dashes out, timing his escape between bursts, and just barely making it back to the German trenches. Its a rare comic scene in an otherwise horrific and very real look at WW1.
The scene in the book is just so familiar to the lines in Ukraine these days, nearly a hundred years later. Instead of spotter planes near the dawn of aviation, we have satellites and drones (similarly quite new in the role). Instead of just shells and fuzing experts, we have FPV drones and much more sophisticated shells. Instead of buddies from the same towns all huddled together in cold muddy holes, we have deracinated units spread far and wide in laying in fear of thermal imaging. This results in a no mans land again, but a dozen kilometers wide instead of a few hundred meters wide, and somehow more psychologically damaging.
My point is that absent any tech that will miraculously be invented and deployed widely in the new few weeks, the Iran war, if it should be a ground one, is going to be just like Ukraine is today, which is somehow a worse version of trench warfare.
Even casual Victoria II players know that WW1 is essentially the final boss of the game. And the 'lesson' of Vicky II is essentialy: Do not fight WW1, it ruins Everything.
To be clear: The US is choosing to fight a worse version of WW1 without even a stated (or likely even known) condition of victory. We're about to send many thousands boys to suffer and die for not 'literally nothing', but actually literally nothing.
- chneu 6mo agoThis just came up yesterday in the sauna with a bunch of dudes. Everything feels unique and special, but we're just repeating history again. Nothing about this situation is actually unique. Change a few names, a few numbers like the year or GPS coords, but most everything today is just history repeating itself. Don't let capitalism convince us to do bad stuff cuz it makes us feel like the moment is special. It isn't. There is a tomorrow. It will be yesterday soon enough.
- freefaler 6mo agoHow is capitalism in the wrong here? Resource warfare is universal trough the history in any society. The check and balances of the US President that can start an offensive war is more a political problem, not "capitalism" problem.
- ben_w 6mo agoWas this started as a resource war, or as a money-making scheme, or as a distraction from the Epstein files, or just because DJT developed actual old age dementia after purging anyone who might say 'no'? To the extent it's a money making scheme, well, capitalism gets blamed for all money making schemes even if it's supposed to be a specific subset of them which is useful for the feedback one can get from open markets. (As that's a caveat inside a caveat, I'm mostly agreeing with you).
- mikkupikku 6mo ago> Was this started as a resource war, or as a money-making scheme, or as a distraction from the Epstein files, or just because DJT developed actual old age dementia after purging anyone who might say 'no'? Or because America is filled with demented cultists who think a two thousand year old property dispute is the key to triggering the Apocalypse so they can all be whisked away to paradise.
- narrator 6mo agoTrump already said he was just going to bomb all their infrastructure so the economy of the country couldn't function if they didn't negotiate and then it's just going to be a mass refugee crisis. It would be a mass refugee crisis anyway with a protracted ground invasion, but more Americans would die, so Trump is choosing to get it over with the easy way for America at least if they won't negotiate. IMHO, This is pretty much the strategy the Khans used in the 13th century when they encountered arrogant Islamist Sultans emboldened with the bravery of their faith who refused to capitulate. They killed all the islamic people in Baghdad and then proceeded to fill all their canals and burn all their books. This decisively ended the Islamic golden age and Europe was able to survive after a very difficult 14th century where it would probably have been easily crushed by Islamists from the East had the Khans not set them back at least a few centuries. Truly one of the big turning points in World History. Oh yeah, we can't do this to Russia because they have nukes, but the Ukrainians are trying to do it piecemeal.
- jacquesm 6mo ago> Oh yeah, we can't do this to Russia because they have nukes Why would the US want to bomb an ally?
- marcus_holmes 6mo agoIt's not an alliance - the Russians are supplying Iran with intelligence and material. It's just that Trump is Putin's biggest fan for some reason.
- FpUser 6mo agoAbility to recognize sarcasm is missing
- marcus_holmes 6mo agoIn Ukraine, the USA and Russia are definitely allied. So sarcasm misplaced, I think.
- thaumasiotes 6mo ago> Cue a terrifying, if hilarious, scene where the soldiers try and cook pancakes as shells explode around them. In the 1974 movie The Four Musketeers, Athos needs to find a private place in which to impart some information to d'Artagnan. The musketeers are currently deployed battling some French rebels. The solution he finds is to place a bet with another soldier that he and his friends will have breakfast inside a fortress that is being bombarded by the rebels. We see a similar comedy scene of five people attempting to cook and eat a meal while under attack. (Athos also struggles to get his information across, since the constant attacks understandably pull a lot of attention.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aezX4lxCaCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aezX4lxCaCw
- shawn_w 6mo agoMovie? That happens in the original book.
- oniony 6mo agoDoes it not also happen in the movie?
- rat9988 6mo agoYou usually cite the original story
- encrypted_bird 6mo agoYou also usually cite what you know. Maybe OP has not read the book.
- thaumasiotes 6mo agoWell, I've read a translation of the book. If that scene was present, it made no impression. It's not very comedic in the book. You can see for yourself: it is the entirety of chapter 47, here: https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1257/pg1257-images.html#chap47 https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1257/pg1257-images.html#cha... . (Interestingly, I would have said that the translation I read came from Project Gutenberg, but it wasn't the one I just linked and no other is currently available there. Does Project Gutenberg take down existing versions of out-of-copyright books sometimes??)
- wvbdmp 6mo agoIt’s difficult to imagine something more psychologically damaging than WWI trenches. Where can we read more about this?
- MikeTheGreat 6mo agoI think the poster's point is that FPV drones & accurate/advanced shells mean that you get all the downsides of WW1 trenches and no-man's land, PLUS new downsides of trenches not helping so you're constantly under threat of death no matter where you are. Plus: the more people huddle together the better the target they are, so you get to hide in small groups (or solo) in the hopes that the economics of killing just you doesn't pencil out and the drones will kill someone else while _they're_ sleeping, instead of you. If you're looking for more reading maybe start with WW1 trenches, then look for YouTube videos about Ukraine drone usage? The drone stuff may be too new for lots of writing about it, but you'll get an oblique view of it by looking at how the Russians put those roll cages / turtle shells over their tanks, etc. If you find anything and wanted to share it that would be interesting (if morbid)!
- martin-t 6mo agoTechnically, they'd be sleeping in a dugout where the entrance is covered by tarps and has ideally at least 2 turns to avoid the blast traveling inside (and potentially to make non-fiber-optic drones lose signal as they try to maneuver inside in case they get past the tarps). You're most likely to get droned when on watch or carrying supplies.
- kitd 6mo agoWritten by protagonists: "The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston" by Siegfried Sassoon. (Ignore the title, it's actually his autobiography, and you could probably skip the first book in the trilogy). "Goodbye to all that" by Robert Graves. Two of the best writers in the English language recounting their times in the trenches.
- seewhat 6mo ago“Storm of Steel” by Ernst Jünger, for one view from the German side. It has been variously perceived as pro- and anti-war.
- PunchyHamster 6mo agoWell, no, the goal is very clear - try to somehow make reps not lose next election and take focus away from PDF files
- chistev 6mo agoMoving focus from PDF files has been achieved - at least for now. But how do you make reps not lose next election with this war lingering on the news?
- gzread 6mo agoRig the election? You could pass a law that makes 1/3 of the country ineligible to vote, but makes sure they won't find out until they're at the polling booth. You could also prepare your allied goons to defend polling stations.
- Tade0 6mo agoRealistically another attack on the scale of 9/11. Republicans were in power throughout the majority of the 00s.
- stickfigure 6mo ago> if it should be a ground one, is going to be just like Ukraine is today I do not think this is correct. The problem in Ukraine is that anti-air defenses control the skies, so the only accurate long range fires are expensive missiles in short supply. This seems to not be a problem in Iran. US forces can fly relatively cheap bomb trucks anywhere and drop ordinance on anything. Stealth aircraft and NATO doctrine apparently work. I'm not advocating for a ground invasion, but there's no reason to believe it would go the way of Ukraine.
- nl 6mo agoIt depends a lot on the kind of campaign that is fought. The US had complete air superiority in Iraq and Afghanistan and while it helped it is unclear how it would play out in a drone-heavy battlefield. In Afghanistan for example the assault on Shah-i-Kot Valley and the ineffectiveness of air support is instructive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Anaconda#TF_Rakkasan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Anaconda#TF_Rakkasan It's worth noting that the US lost both those wars - the Taliban rules again in Afghanistan and Iran is more influential in Iraq after the fall of Saddam than it was before, eg: https://www.cfr.org/articles/how-much-influence-does-iran-have-iraq https://www.cfr.org/articles/how-much-influence-does-iran-ha...
- don_esteban 6mo agoIran is a large country, just getting to Tehran with large-enough force is logistically enormous task. Complicated by the fact that the logistic convoys can nowadays be trivially decimated by FPVs. Air superiority is not going to help you much against small dispersed resistance groups with FPVs (ideally fiber optics, so not detectable by emissions from afar). There is a chance that there will be similar democratization with AA (you will need proper AA missiles, the physics of reaching a fast jet flying high simply demands it), but the distributed passive targeting is made much simpler with current commodity computing and optics. Achieving AA Denial is difficult, but forcing the attacker to use standoff munitions instead of gravity bombs/close-in air support not so much: shifting the risk of losing an aircraft from 1 in 100000 to 1 in 100 will do it.
- mft_ 6mo ago> The problem in Ukraine is that anti-air defenses control the skies... <snip> ...US forces can fly relatively cheap bomb trucks anywhere and drop ordinance on anything. Stealth aircraft and NATO doctrine apparently work. In Ukraine, neither side has access to the air weaponry (in capabilities or volume) that the US does - so the battlefield has evolved into one of drone superiority. So yes, the US could (logistics willing) pummel Iran with B52s, B2s, and the like, maybe largely unopposed. However, this would only achieve so much: "winning" would be very different, especially when it's likely to turn into into a grinding resistance/insurgency ground war. A better analogy than Ukraine may be the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, only Iran has far more trained fighters and weaponry from the start. Or Vietnam, of course. Maybe the US could "win", but it would depend on the strength of the political will to continue losing soldiers and spending huge amounts of money; and it would certainty be seen as a "forever war". And of course (as noted elsewhere) the US' more recent forays into Iraq and Afghanistan show how difficult regime change by force is.
- whynotmaybe 6mo agoI'm not sure it will last long once we see a few videos of drone kill of US soldiers on /r/dronecombat Ukraine must defend itself against an authoritarian Russia where nobody can publicly complain about what's happening. This is not the case in the US, unless they go full dictatorship.
- magic_hamster 6mo ago[flagged]
- ACCount37 6mo agoUkrainian war is the way it is because neither side has a decisive advantage in air. There's barely any CAS - there are, however, lightweight drones. If Iran were to become a major ground war, one of the sides would have air dominance, and we know which one. How that would change things remains to be seen. But it wouldn't be the same exact trench war, that's certain enough.
- MidnightRider39 6mo agoI don’t think air dominance will hold up for long if a plane costs billions and a drone a couple thousand. Any interceptor rocket the US uses will set them back millions versus literal peanuts on the other side. Add that Iran is basically a mountain fortress and they’ll run out of money very quickly; disregarding that prolonging the war will be __very__ unpopular in the US. They really got themselves into an unwinnable bind
- ACCount37 6mo agoHow does a drone costing "a couple thousand" take out a plane? It doesn't. Shaheds and quads offer no threat to US air superiority. Iran can fling them at the ground targets willy-nilly, sure, and that will inflict causalities on FOBs and ground forces. There's no ready-made solution to low end attack drones. But the sky is going to remain with the US. This allows US to dispense JDAMs at anything that pops its nose out into the open. Which doesn't play well with the notion of "positional trench warfare". Any "position" like this is a liability when the kill loops are tight and the sky speaks precision munitions. If a major ground operation happens, I expect it to look closer to "2024 Gaza urban warfare hell" than to "2024 Ukraine open field war of attrition". Defending forces hiding from the air power in urban formations, causalities and collateral damage from the attackers trying to flush them out, humanitarian consequences from supply lines interdictions. I very much agree that "the war is unpopular in the US" is a severe pressure on how much US can accomplish in practice. But what US sets out to do, how hard the US commits and how much can US actually accomplish there all remain to be seen. They could well purge the regime, destroy the key weapon facilities or grab-and-hold the oil fields before the domestic audience runs out of patience and pressures the politicians, or votes the decision-makers out. Keep in mind: Iran isn't running off a pool of limitless resources either. The regime was already struggling a lot before US and Israel declared open season on the leaders - and the external pressure only buys you this much cohesion. Iran's military infrastructure is not in a tip-top shape, their income streams are dubious, they don't have many allies left after the proxy purges, they don't have reliable weapon suppliers overseas, and their own weapon stockpiles and production are unlikely to be sustainable in any way. They can sustain much more manpower losses and tolerate more hardship, sure - but there is no limitless tolerance. A regime that purges protestors by the thousands can't rely on its population being willing to suffer and die for it. So there's nothing inherently "unwinnable" about this. It's a horrid mess of unknown war goals, questionable decision-making and dubious war sustainability, on both sides. Outcomes are very hard to estimate without some damn good intel.