3 ms·

"terminal ballistic instability" - interesting. All we were told is that these bullets can do so much damage, that even hitting a foot at close range can easily

"terminal ballistic instability" - interesting. All we were told is that these bullets can do so much damage, that even hitting a foot at close range can easily kill someone, so we had to be extra careful when handling the weapon. Most of the soldiers who don't have an explicit infantry role mostly train at long range target shooting (400m). Also, each year soldiers need to go do their 'mandatory shooting' - 10 rounds at 300m with some required precision. So I think you're right about long distance precision being the most important requirement for Swiss army rifles - probably makes sense assuming a purely defensive stance. The way I see an ideal Swiss army would be a concentration on locally organized Guerilla forces anyway - heavy tanks and artillery could be completely canceled and the airforce could be reduced to a pure air police. In a hypothetical war against a big nation, air superiority would be lost in probably less than a day, which immediately renders stationary forces and tanks useless - but the biggest asset we would have is precisely those bunkers and 500k rifles in the hands of people that are well enough trained at distance shooting. All that would be needed is a difficult-to-suppress way of communication. For that matter I'd issue a new kind of radio device to all households and include it in a new law. Let these radios create an encrypted ad-hoc network with frequency hopping and lots of random noise on unused channels. Make the software and hardware Open Source and cheap, such that a) they can be improved by the community and b) can be used by oppressed people in other parts of the world. Then we could wish any future agressive foreign government much fun at financing a long drawn out oppressive war against a mountainous country with 8M bunkers, 4M radios and 0.5M rifles - with all useful bridges and tunnels gone ;-).

hga 13y ago
Oh, yes, this class of cartridge can be deadly, it's a question of statistically how reliable is its "stopping power"; killing is a secondary consideration after stopping someone from trying to kill you! I'm impressed that there's lots of > 300m training, 400m effective range is achievable with this class of rounds, but the bullet drop after 300m is serious. But you wouldn't want an enemy to get complacent if they were > 300m from your people. Not sure about your ideal; the heavy forces have a deterrent effect, they ensure reducing them in an all out war would be expensive. As I recall, the German General Staff figured taking Switzerland during WWII would break 85 divisions, a cost they simply couldn't afford. Which came at a cost to the Swiss, you mobilized your army, shut down your stock market, etc., the defensive "threat" was credible, deterrence was achieved. (I haven't read it yet, but this is supposed to be the current best book in English on the topic, written by a very solid and trustworthy author: http://www.amazon.com/Target-Switzerland-Swiss-Armed-Neutrality/dp/0306813254/ http://www.amazon.com/Target-Switzerland-Swiss-Armed-Neutral... ). It's also worth noting the accepted costs of the Swiss strategic system, then, during the Cold War, and presumably during a future attack by a major nation (which, as it became more likely, you might presume would include Switzerland bulking up its heavy forces in response). Very bloody minded: give the indefensible lowland big cities to the enemy (where per the book I linked to previously, the citizens practice "Total Resistance" using among other things those decommissioned from military service older rifles), and retreat to the mountainous country and make the enemy pay for every foot they gain, with little more than bullets and rifle grenades if need be. Per the apocryphal quote from the Imperial Japanese Navy admiral who planned the Pearl Harbor attack, "a rifle behind every blade of grass". Also, after the Vidkun Quisling debacle, a general order that henceforth no surrender order would be legitimate, and to fight to the last man and foot of ground. (Well, meter of ground of course.) Credible deterrence, which I submit to you, your current heavy stuff aids. Certainly aids in deterring any less than all out attempt to "punish" Switzerland for whatever. Right now the latter is "unthinkable" in part because you've got those heavy forces.
- m_mueller 13y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I think that heavy mobile forces have been very valid in WW2 - I just think that nowadays they don't make much sense anymore, and the main reason is a) today's intelligence capabilities that make everything big very hard to hide, b) air-to-air capabilities of big nations that are impossible to match for a country like Switzerland and c) the efficiency of air-to-ground bombing. Basically, you can have as many tanks and artillery defenses as you want, as long as you can't keep either air superiority or intelligence superiority, they're useless - and as far as I can tell, in both those areas you can forget holding up against a power like, say, Russia. On the other hand hundreds of thousands, up to 1M, resistance fighters in urban or woods territory with sufficient Demo, RPGs, good rifles and ammunition - it becomes a huge numbers game to fight this. The USA are basically the only nation that has become efficient at dealing with this sort of situation, and even then there's no end in sight in the Afghan conflict for example. That's why I think a guerilla army that has been trained at this, for everyone to see, is a much bigger deterrent than heavy machinery - and it also takes much longer to be outdated.

hga 13y ago

Oh, yes, this class of cartridge can be deadly, it's a question of statistically how reliable is its "stopping power"; killing is a secondary consideration after stopping someone from trying to kill you! I'm impressed that there's lots of > 300m training, 400m effective range is achievable with this class of rounds, but the bullet drop after 300m is serious. But you wouldn't want an enemy to get complacent if they were > 300m from your people. Not sure about your ideal; the heavy forces have a deterrent effect, they ensure reducing them in an all out war would be expensive. As I recall, the German General Staff figured taking Switzerland during WWII would break 85 divisions, a cost they simply couldn't afford. Which came at a cost to the Swiss, you mobilized your army, shut down your stock market, etc., the defensive "threat" was credible, deterrence was achieved. (I haven't read it yet, but this is supposed to be the current best book in English on the topic, written by a very solid and trustworthy author: http://www.amazon.com/Target-Switzerland-Swiss-Armed-Neutrality/dp/0306813254/ http://www.amazon.com/Target-Switzerland-Swiss-Armed-Neutral... ). It's also worth noting the accepted costs of the Swiss strategic system, then, during the Cold War, and presumably during a future attack by a major nation (which, as it became more likely, you might presume would include Switzerland bulking up its heavy forces in response). Very bloody minded: give the indefensible lowland big cities to the enemy (where per the book I linked to previously, the citizens practice "Total Resistance" using among other things those decommissioned from military service older rifles), and retreat to the mountainous country and make the enemy pay for every foot they gain, with little more than bullets and rifle grenades if need be. Per the apocryphal quote from the Imperial Japanese Navy admiral who planned the Pearl Harbor attack, "a rifle behind every blade of grass". Also, after the Vidkun Quisling debacle, a general order that henceforth no surrender order would be legitimate, and to fight to the last man and foot of ground. (Well, meter of ground of course.) Credible deterrence, which I submit to you, your current heavy stuff aids. Certainly aids in deterring any less than all out attempt to "punish" Switzerland for whatever. Right now the latter is "unthinkable" in part because you've got those heavy forces.

m_mueller 13y ago
Don't get me wrong, I think that heavy mobile forces have been very valid in WW2 - I just think that nowadays they don't make much sense anymore, and the main reason is a) today's intelligence capabilities that make everything big very hard to hide, b) air-to-air capabilities of big nations that are impossible to match for a country like Switzerland and c) the efficiency of air-to-ground bombing. Basically, you can have as many tanks and artillery defenses as you want, as long as you can't keep either air superiority or intelligence superiority, they're useless - and as far as I can tell, in both those areas you can forget holding up against a power like, say, Russia. On the other hand hundreds of thousands, up to 1M, resistance fighters in urban or woods territory with sufficient Demo, RPGs, good rifles and ammunition - it becomes a huge numbers game to fight this. The USA are basically the only nation that has become efficient at dealing with this sort of situation, and even then there's no end in sight in the Afghan conflict for example. That's why I think a guerilla army that has been trained at this, for everyone to see, is a much bigger deterrent than heavy machinery - and it also takes much longer to be outdated.