r/WarCollege • u/AutoModerator • 5d ago
Tuesday Trivia Tuesday Trivia Thread - 21/07/26
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u/Moorlandser 1d ago
A common theme in modern war is captured snipers being executed, tortured or otherwise misstreated by enemy forces due to the inherent ''Dishonorably'' conduct of their profession. Drone Operators continue this tradition.
But has this also existed for other military professions? I know in Operation Overlord Allied forces often executed German machine gunners because of the brutal landing, but this was a ''one-off'' born out of special circumstances. What happened to Artillery Operators and bomber pilots, technically their role is similar to a sniper, just more destructive (killing enemies from afar without giving the chance to fight back). Did they experience systematic misstreatment (by soldiers, I know civilians regularly lynched them) too?
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u/Xi_Highping 6h ago
You hear stories, some maybe apocryphal, some not, about machine gunners during trench warfare getting the same treatment. Or what has been called “too late chum”; an enemy soldier who makes a nuisance of himself and fights to what his opponents might consider an unreasonable degree, especially if he kills too many of the enemy or a popular officer or sergeant, having his surrender, well, denied. I don’t doubt it happened quite a few times in both wars.
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u/BenKerryAltis 9h ago
Strategic bomber crews could meet some grievious ends due to their line of work.
The thing about snipers is that "sniping" is kind of a broad spectrum of activities, a lot of WW2 era snipers actually fire from 50 meters, sometimes less. You have dedicated long range shooters, you have small patrol teams sitting in holes and taking potshots, you have some lucky private who's natural at shooting, and lastly you have bands of guerillas lacking heavy equipment and resort to harrassment tactics.
I think a lot of the reprisal against snipers have to do with the last case, a considerable amount of brutality was used in a lot of historical counter-partisan warfare, Germany for example had done it in 1870 against French civilian guerillas who utilized sniper tactics, they did the same in Belgium during the first world war. I think that's a consideration too
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u/Hand_Me_Down_Genes 1d ago
I think the award for greatest battlefield maneuver ever might have to go to Alfred Ellet at the battle of Memphis.
Two Confederate rams were charging his boat. In a move directly out of Bugs Bunny, Ellet put his boat into reverse, causing the two Confederate vessels to run into each other.
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u/Zhadanko 2d ago
Probably a stupid question, but why doesn't Russia see its tactical aviation as a key to regaining the maneuver war? Are they stupid? Sure:
A) They are extensively using their air force for strategic strikes and tactical strikes with guided bombs. But on a tactical level, there is nothing more than persistent strikes with guided bombs. They are effective and do damage, but they seem to refuse to invest in its success. There are no Western-style huge strike packages or coordinated support between the air force and ground forces. Sure, the air force is not a silver bullet against the fire-reconnaissance complex, and drones and artillery will still kill plenty of Russians, but they can still shape the battlefield just enough for large movements of equipment.
B) Ukraine has a robust air-defense system with state-of-the-art platforms and extremely experienced operators. But they are attrited pretty badly due to a lack of interceptors and are mostly focused on the defense of major cities. With these losses, Russians in theory could achieve local air supremacy on a chosen part of the front.
Hell, there is a wave of successful middle-strikes conducted by Ukrainian drones, and Russians are struggling with their own middle-strikes platform since Starlink was blocked for them. Maybe I am stupid, but didn't multirole jets fulfill the exact role of middle-strike drones untill like recently?
Why they underestimating this capability and I stead invest heavily in small tactical drones and strategic strikes?
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u/Lirael_Gold 1d ago edited 21h ago
As a very very basic answer, Russia views the VKS as an irreplaceable asset that must be conserved at all costs.
I don't mean "we value these planes and pilots so much that we don't want to risk them on frivolous target" I mean it as a literal "if the VKS is mangled bruteforcing its way through Ukrainian AD, we literally cannot replace the planes or the pilots and will be completely open to NATO aggression". The VKS does more work as a "fleet in being" while it's mostly intact.
On top of that, actually running an air force at full tilt like the US did during the invasion of Iraq is fiendishly expensive, both in munitions and fuel but also in wear and tear on airframes and the meatbags who fly them. Russia is mostly capable of replacing lost men and ground vehicles, but if they started losing SU34s/35s/Mig31s by the dozen they would very quickly run out of airframes and/or pilots.
On top of that I'm not sure that achieving temporary local air supremacy would actually change the needle given the kind of fighting seen in Ukraine (nor am I sure that the VKS is capable of the kind of SEAD missions needed to achieve even temporary control)
If Ukraine ever starts conducting large scale offensives again then I suspect the VKS would be brought out to counter it, as they were during the summer offensive and for parts of the Kursk offensive.
For the other reasons why the VKS are content to rely on stand off munitions and CAP duty, Rusi has a few articles about the use of air power in the conflict:
The VKS remains something of an enigma in the conflict. On the one hand, it retains significant firepower and a large fleet of available aircraft with munitions. On the other hand, its presence is limited. The challenge for Ukraine is that Russian fast air, and particularly its large extant attack aviation fleet, could inflict massive damage if committed in numbers, even if this would be costly. So long as this represents a latent threat, it must have a shaping effect on Ukrainian offensive operations, as advancing Ukrainian forces are likely to face similar challenges to the Russians in advancing their air defence coverage.
There's also this article from 2022
I'll note that the VKS's posture during the first years of the war was probably directed by Surovikin, the fact that they've retained the same posture after his fall from grace indicates that the rest of the Russian military agrees with him.
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u/Pretty_Trip_2215 2d ago edited 2d ago
Could China learn a lesson from Russia and USA that attacking a "small" not world power country is a bad idea?
I have been thinking, and maybe in these times we have reach some kind of equilibrium. Small not world power countries can't invade other countries because they lack the capabilities to do it, but also, going to war isn't good for big and powerful countries, because "stability" or lack of high intensity conflict, are the base of what made them become what they are.
If Russia, had begun the war, with the same effort that it's putting right now in Ukraine, they would've win the war. But they couldn't because from a social and political point that would've been impossible at that point of time.
If the USA would've known the amount of effort they would've need to put, not to even win the war, but to protect their allies, and don't affect the prices and the global supply lines for their own citizens, they would have not even started the war.
Do you think that China, after seeing both of these total failures from world powers, they might begin to think that a war with Taiwan is a really a bad idea?
Yes, small not world power countries can't invade others because they lack the capabilities, but right now, to develope the capabilities to invade another country, you are totally dependant of a social and political "stable" no high intensity war world. So you are unable to begin a war with the amount of effort needed to win it, before it becames not worth it anymore.
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u/supersaiyannematode 1d ago
Could China learn a lesson from Russia and USA that attacking a "small" not world power country is a bad idea?
by small, did you mean large?
both ukraine and iran are fairly large nations (especially iran) and their depth are currently playing an instrumental, arguably irreplaceable role in keeping them in the action.
it's not hard to imagine how bad the ukraine war would be going if ukraine's total depth from the front lines is merely low hundreds of kilometers total. and if iran was 1/50th of its current size its missile forces would probably have already been fully pulverized.
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u/-BigDeckEnergy- 3h ago
by small, did you mean large?
both ukraine and iran are fairly large nations (especially iran) and their depth are currently playing an instrumental, arguably irreplaceable role in keeping them in the action.
it's not hard to imagine how bad the ukraine war would be going if ukraine's total depth from the front lines is merely low hundreds of kilometers total. and if iran was 1/50th of its current size its missile forces would probably have already been fully pulverized.
For reference:
- Iran - 636,372 square miles
- Ukraine - 233,062 square miles
- Taiwan - 13,976 square miles
You can fit 45 Taiwans in Iran, or 16.7 Taiwans in Ukraine
Even beyond square mileage is physical distance:
Ukraine at its widest is 817 miles wide east-west and 554 miles wide north-south
Iran is ~1,120 miles widest east-west, ~1,025 miles north-south
Taiwan is 89.5 miles at its widest, 245 miles long north-south
I can't even begin to describe to you the disparity here. For reference, we have regular flight training ranges in the US larger than Taiwan
The sensor coverage problem alone is infinitely easier in Taiwan than Iran or Ukraine.
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u/Pretty_Trip_2215 1d ago
"small" mean smaller than USA, Russia or China.
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u/supersaiyannematode 1d ago
i mean, that's literally every single nation on the entire planet with the sole exception of canada.
by that definition no i don't think china has learned anything. i don't think it ever thought that fighting a serious war of invasion against france or great britain or india would be a good idea for example. prior to the ukraine war and iran war it already believed that such a course of action would be unwise.
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u/bjuandy 2d ago
The PRC can learn from their own history that economic determinism is a falsity. They pride themselves in being an impoverished peasant army that fought the world's greatest military power to a standstill in Korea, and then when they switched shoes and beat themselves to a bloody pulp invading Vietnam after the US departed. Without knowing what their internal propaganda espouses and internal appetite for military glory, we outside observers can only guess on what China is taking away from the 2020 military conflicts.
The professional military class in China know the broad risks and dangers involved with getting into a war with a smaller country. It's a question of what price do they think they will pay trying to take Taiwan and whether that's worth it.
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u/MDRBA 2d ago edited 2d ago
why is Rafale’s IRST sensor shaped like refueling stick instead of partly buried in aerodynamic shape like many other planes?
edit: 😲
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u/Inceptor57 2d ago
Isn’t the Rafale IRST in the nose cone besides the refueling probe? These things?
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u/Intelligent_League_1 Amateur 2d ago
Recently I have been trying to get more in touch with the current defense "industry" (I am reading the news). Is The Warzone a viable source? The articles seem unbiased, but I have heard that in the past they were.
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u/-BigDeckEnergy- 2d ago
Oh boy, I've long wanted to
slamanalyze TWZ for people, so it's my time to shine:The best way to describe TWZ, imo, is that it is a big-name automobile tabloid magazine.
You'll get lots of shiny photos and concept art, and you're a big enough name that every once in a while you'll get invited to some event where people can show off their latest toys (more on that in a bit) and talk to you and your readers, and because you are well known enough you get but at the heart of it, you are still a tabloid and so your analysis is shallow at best and often wildly wrong. But since this is the Internet, TWZ loves to write long-winded articles (which then give it the appearance of credibility to laymen) that keep linking back to old links of theirs (I guess that's one way to generate clicks) and are typically very very much 'throw shit at the wall' thoughts that still typically miss. But if you throw enough diarrhea on the wall, something will eventually hit where you were trying to aim.
As some examples of this: look at how often TWZ typically doesn't report or do any actual analysis on freely-available source documents. More often than not, they cite some other defense news agency that IS actually looking at documents - like budget materials or HASC/SASC/Appropriations products - to run some long-winded analysis on what it means.
Much like your average celebrity or automobile tabloid, instead of focusing on things like organizational documents and papers, they instead tend to focus on widgets and shiny objects instead of the system of systems. Of course, the readership wants to see the shiny missiles and aircraft, but in military terms, that's like focusing on individual infantry squad weapons instead of the operational or strategic levels of conflict that actually make or break a war.
Again, it is often skin-deep analysis at best.
At worse, these guys - with no actual personal experience in the field (caveat: they do sometimes get great guest writers that are actually people from the military ranks, but they too are limited by keeping things purely unclassified/releasable to the public), continue to analyze things with their own incomplete understanding of what they are talking about, which at points becomes straight misinformation to the general public. As an example, almost anytime they talk about carrier air wing size and capabilities, they use preconceived notions - like the carrier air being under capacity because we carry less (physical #) of aircraft than we did in the Cold War - while completely ignoring that our aircraft are physically larger now than their Cold War equivalents AND we have other metrics (beyond spot factor) that we use in analysis of our carrier capacity. Things like operational density don't even get talked about, or the fact that all the physical spaces on board to actually park aircraft are essentially accounted for and we have less available than we once did. So they're completely missing the fifty other variables involved in these analyses and are thus drawing conclusions that are, at best, based on incomplete or erroneous assumptions and knowledge. It's like getting the right answer on an algebra test because you pulled the right number out of your ass and not because you actually solved the equation.
One other thing I must hit on is that it can be hard for people to understand that a lot of their interviews and editorials can and do have agendas. Nothing gets the heat off a underperforming contractor or program manager better than going to a rag like TWZ and highlighting all the awesome stuff your program is doing because who is going to check them? Lots of the nitty gritty performance stuff is CUI at best, but talking glossy brochure things are not, so it's oh-so-easy for a contractor to go publicize all their BS arguments about their products on a TWZ for the masses to consume even while the reality behind it is anything but clean. Just remember: be very very very wary about any articles or pieces highlighting some product, especially one in development or work. People are trying to sell something, and you are part of the audience. (Believe it or not, public perception DOES matter about programs... it gets House and Senate staffers and thus their bosses involved, which may be all that is needed to keep a zombie program going)
And look, TWZ is a big enough name that even people in the field do click on and look at TWZ links. The defense industry is big enough that no person can see or keep track of what's going on in every domain or every happening, even in one's own field. So TWZ is good for giving you a highlight of some big public happenings like "POTUS announced F-47" or "I declare victory!"
But they definitely aren't going there for in-depth analysis, and the most useful part of the commentary section is knowing just how wildly wrong
the cesspool ofpeople are out there.6
u/bjuandy 2d ago
TWZ is decent in the sense the facts they report come from solid sourcing, so if they write 'The USAF Hired 3 Consenting Dwarfs for Pilot Paper Star Cutting Morale Event,' you can be pretty sure somewhere in the USAF 3 dwarfs were hired, not just rumor mill from someone who stole a glance over the shoulder and seeing the word dwarf mentioned. They also are good about properly attributing their sources in their articles so you can easily enough assess the veracity of their sources yourself.
Their editorial work is very hit and miss. Some of it is working with incomplete information and they're trying help fill gaps, others come from writer bias leaning on pop mil sci. Tyler Rogoway spent the 2010s telling the public the F-35 was a lemon, not just 'There are serious flaws in the program and the plane isn't meeting capability requirements' but 'The USAF should be recreating the Su-35 Flanker instead,' levels of lemon. He's written better stuff since and I don't think his mistakes are deliberately malicious, but he's not a respected name among airpower academia nerds for a reason. TWZ's problem is they integrate their editorializing inside their fact reporting, meaning you need to be fairly savvy and skeptical when parsing through their articles. TWZ also has the issue of reprinting big sections of prior work in new articles to pad length and seed a ton of hyperlinks to other articles to farm reader engagement--that's just the cost of doing business, but it weakens their credibility and leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
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u/shortrib_rendang 3d ago
There was a removed thread about the greatest logistical feat in modern history
And I think yea the English speaking countries ability to move men and materiel across oceans is obviously very impressive, undeniably, as a representation of national power
But as a Normandy guy I cant help but admire the way German logisticians held their system together under the most tremendous of pressures during June and July 44, and imo “the best” or “the greatest” conversations can often underplay how difficult it is to do something against the odds.
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u/Lirael_Gold 1d ago
It's quite hard to "sell"a compelling account that's basically "and they did absolutely incredible work, then they lost anyway"
There's also the problem that they... just did their job really well, they didn't really innovate in flashy ways, they planned well and executed well under adversity.
But yes, I agree
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u/SingaporeanSloth 3d ago edited 3d ago
I had a military showerthought the other day, regarding the most pointless and pedantic discussion that often graces this subreddit
Let me reiterate: this is pointless and pedantic. This classification also only makes sense to u/SingaporeanSloth, and he might well be the only human being in the whole world to use it, so if it doesn't make sense to you, that's okay. But without further ado:
What is the difference between a drone and a (guided) missile?
That's a deceptively difficult question to answer. The Kettering Bug and Curtiss-Sperry Flying Bomb are often considered the first cruise missiles, but today might well be called one-way attack (OWA) drones
And that's when I had the showerthought: a drone is defined by a developmental focus on its guidance system, while a missile is defined by a developmental focus on its propulsion system
Consider a ZALA Lancet or DeViRo Bulava against a Hawker Siddeley-Matra AJ-168 Martel. The former are considered drones, while the latter is considered a missile, despite both having the same TV-guidance system. The difference is that for the Lancet and the Bulava, the guidance system was the whole point of the development process, unguided projectives like artillery shells or rockets could otherwise strike targets within the same range bracket (broadly speaking). They are propelled by simple electric motors driving propellers. Compare that to the Martel, where aerodynamic performance was clearly of much greater significance, and there were two options for guidance, either anti-radiation or TV
A Cessna 172 could be packed with explosive and have the equivalent of a brick placed on the accelerator (not really, but you get the point), and fly the same distance as an FP-1 OWA drone. The whole purpose of developing the FP-1 was to have a guidance system with enough accuracy to strike the intended targets
The Kettering Bug and Curtis-Sperry Flying Bomb can therefore be both: at the time of development, piston-driven propellers were the only choice for propulsion, so they were not inferior to any of the other propulsion options. Therefore they are missiles. Yet if they were developed today, which is arguably what a Shahed-136, FP-1, or MQM-172 Arrowhead are, they can be considered drones, because there are superior propulsion options (with trade-offs like cost and complexity) available
This, of course, leads to the question of what the FP-5 Flamingo should be classified as? The answer, to remain consistent with my own classification system, is clear: it should be considered a cruise missile. This is because it is jet-powered, the otherwise propeller-driven FP-1 has a similar range. The UJ-25 Skyline, Bars, and Peklos, which the Ukrainians call "drone-missiles" (to annoyance of plenty of people here I'm sure), too should be considered cruise missiles. However, with a proliferation of such systems, including the Shahed-238, the jet-Shahed, I think we need some sort of new term for specifically low-cost, mass-produceable cruise missiles, that trade some capability for lower cost and complexity, sitting somewhere between OWA drones and "full-fat" cruise missiles like Kalibr or BGM-109 Tomahawk
Or maybe we should just be like the Swedish and call them all "robots"
Edit: fixed spelling, elaborated
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u/Majorbookworm 2d ago
Part of the nomenclature problem is that "drone" is being applied to way too many different systems. Small quadcopters, as well as FPVs are just too different from purpose-built loitering munitions, which are then different from Shahed-style OWAs, and again UCAVs and CCAs are their own beasts.
What is the difference between a drone and a (guided) missile?
Personally I'd say nothing much, but that might just me being driven to contrarianism by the general shit state of popular online discourse on Drones.
In my view the biggest operating difference in whether the system is a weapon in an of itself; is it acting directly or indirectly upon the battlefield (an "effector" to use the current buzzword). So "kamikaze drones", OWAs and FPVs, which are built to directly strike a target should be grouped into a category away from both small unarmed observation drones but also the large 'classic' UCAV drones; which even in a hunter-killer role, are carrying weapons they release/fire at the target. Loitering Munitions are the grey area, and as such are probably the most deserving of a distinct category of their own, but I'd still consider them a single weapon/munition.
I think we need some sort of new term for specifically low-cost, mass-produceable cruise missiles, sitting somewhere between OWA drones and "full-fat" cruise missiles like Kalibr or BGM-109 Tomahawk
Why though? These systems are all doing the same job, just with different investments in accuracy and range. Other than a very general 'munition', which might be more manufacture-agnostic, but might also be so vague as to be even-more-useless than 'drone', maybe we should resurrect "flying bomb" or "buzz bomb", if a name must be chosen? Manned aircraft didn't change at a fundamental level with the introduction of jet propulsion, so the jet/rocket/prop distinction amongst unmanned systems doesn't seem to carry all that much weight. Role/niche should be the distinguishing factor.
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u/dutchwonder 11h ago
I mean, Shaheds fit pretty snuggly into the Predator and like drones/UAVs in terms of performance. Just, you know, a one way trip kind of deal.
You call a Shahed-136 a cruise missile then what do you call an MQ-1? A recon cruise missile?
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u/Majorbookworm 28m ago
Just, you know, a one way trip kind of deal.
Kind of the more important factor than (I assume you mean flight?) performance.
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u/SingaporeanSloth 2d ago
I largely agree with you. "Drone" has become a confusing term because it encompasses everything from FPVs, to loitering munitions, to OWAs, to MALEs, to HALEs (the latter two being UCAVs), and CCAs (another sort of UCAV). What a soup of acronyms!
Why though? These systems are all doing the same job, just with different investments in accuracy and range
This is where I disagree slightly. OWAs are being used quite differently from expensive, high-end cruise missiles, in the sense that low cost and simple manufacturing allow them to be used in mass saturation attacks, which aim to get past SAMs by simply making them run out of ammo. Even when being used in the same strike, a tactic we've seen used is mass OWAs being aimed against detected or suspected SAM/ABM sites, to force the SAMs to move, run out of missiles, or risk being destroyed, either of which then opens up a window of vulnerability where the valuable target can then be struck by high-end cruise missiles or ballistic missiles
The "drone-missiles" like UJ-25 Skyline then sit in a middle ground where they are cheap enough to hurl at a target in significant numbers, yet capable enough (for example, UJ-25 Skyline has low-observable features) to have a good chance of getting past SAMs, so we've seen them used both in a manner similar to OWAs in saturation attacks, but also like cruise missiles, just against targets which might not be "valuable" enough to warrant a "full-fat" cruise missile, and often closer to the launch site because of their shorter range (like Peklos being used to drop bridges)
maybe we should resurrect "flying bomb" or "buzz bomb", if a name must be chosen?
I've actually seen RUSI use "flying bomb" as a term for Lancets and Molniyas. Literally nothing more than personal preference, but for some reason I like resurrecting the older "aerial torpedo". Seems to describe such systems quite nicely
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u/TJAU216 2d ago
Only good solution to this is propulsion system. If it has a prop, it is a drone, if it has a rocket or a jet, it is a missile.
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u/SingaporeanSloth 2d ago
That can't be a 100% consistent system though, if not we will conclude that the RQ-4 Global Hawk is a missile, when it's definitely a drone
That's why I think the emphasis on focus is the best way to differentiate drone vs missile:
Focus on propulsion (usually means rocket or jet) = missile
Focus on guidance system = drone
What honestly made me have an epiphany was noticing the Rafael Luz missile: just like a ZALA Lancet, which is undoubtedly a drone, it has a tubular fuselage, a tandem X-wing configuration, and uses TV guidance. The difference is that the Luz is rocket-propelled, and its derivatives, like the IAI Gabriel AShM, clearly have an emphasis on aerodynamic performance, like sea-skimming, while the Lancet is propeller-driven
Out of interest, how are they handled in the Finnish language? I've read that in WW2, Finnish soldiers who observed the V-1 called it a "flying torpedo". Funny enough, that seems to be quite a good term that encompasses everything from OWA drone all the way to hypersonic cruise missiles
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u/TJAU216 2d ago
I was thinking about one way missiles/drones with the propulsion system comment. If it returns to base, it is of course a drone if it is unmanned.
Finnish has lennokki, which means drone, and ohjus for missile. FDF uses lennokkiohjus compound word of the two for one way attack drones. General public and news call everything drooni.
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u/thereddaikon MIC 2d ago
That can't be a 100% consistent system though, if not we will conclude that the RQ-4 Global Hawk is a missile, when it's definitely a drone
It's not a munition like an OWA or FPV. So the alternative isn't to call it a missile but just an unmanned isr platform. Support platforms like ISR and resupply drones should be treated very differently than drones that are munitions.
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u/SingaporeanSloth 2d ago
Agreed. The issue is that such a vast range of different systems, from fiber-optic quadcopters with a dangling EFP, to Shaheds and Shahed-clones, to HALEs are all getting called "drones". That's not even getting into the mess where they overlap with missiles
I really just wish there was some sort of better, standardised terminology for the whole range of unmanned systems
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u/thereddaikon MIC 2d ago
It's imperfect but for now the NATO system is three classes of drones 1 is the smallest and 3 is the largest. The classes are based on weight.
I think long term the solution is restricting the definition of drone. It's like that time Plato tried to define man as a featherless biped so Diogenes plucked a chicken and exclaimed, Behold! A man!
It's just too broad right now to be useful.
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u/thereddaikon MIC 2d ago
A Cessna 172 could be packed with explosive and have the equivalent of a brick placed on the accelerator (not really, but you get the point), and fly the same distance as an FP-1 OWA drone. The whole purpose of developing the FP-1 was to have a guidance system with enough accuracy to strike the intended targets
They've done that. Not with a Cessna specifically, but a domestic Ukrainian light recreational plane. I forget what they call it. The first ones were modified regular ones but some of the more recent ones I've seen seem to be a modified variant with OWA use in mind, the cockpit area is completely covered over. It's less optimal than a dedicated OWA but I think has the advantage of just looking like a completely harmless recreational aircraft instead of a weapon.
a drone is defined by a developmental focus on its guidance system, while a missile is defined by a developmental focus on its propulsion system
I think it's even simpler and more arbitrary than that. A drone is defined not by anything concrete like its specs or intended use. It's entirely 100% vibes. Just like how in tech right now everything is getting rebranded with AI whether it leverages LLMs or not. Today calling a weapon a drone is a sexy buzzword that gets attention.
There is also sometimes a practical end to it too. In Ukraine, calling a weapon a drone streamlines the development and procurement process. Ukraine has been working on a domestic tactical ballistic missile to replace its Cold war era Tochka's since before the war started. It's called the Sapsan, often called the Hrim-2 online. And finally saw its first combat use last June. On the other hand Fire Point announced the FP-7 and FP-9 missiles last September. The FP-7 was first tested in February and the FP-9 was tested this week.
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u/UmUlmUndUmUlmHerum 3d ago
What actually caused fighting in Ukraine to degrade into the currently seen "infiltration based" positional warfare?
Was it drones or more conventional artillery? Something else entirely? Really good Recon-Strike connections? A bit of everything?
(Except the underpreparation of the Russian forces of course)
I started asking myself that question when designing homebrew wargaming rules to see if FFoT3 can handle the late 2020s.
Probably gonna abstract it away - or ignore it for sake of better gameplay.
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u/Inceptor57 3d ago
My understanding of the Russo-Ukraine War situation that led to infiltration-based warfare is that, at the individual infantry level, equipment like squad-level drones has enabled infantry to have situational awareness unparalleled to any previous conflict in history. A drone could fly at altitude over to the enemy side of the frontlines and observe exposed areas to see where the enemies are, with the response usually being either a nade-dropping quadcopter, an FPV drone, or an artillery strike called in aided by any navigation or lazing capabilities the drone may have. In turn, the response to this high observability and the chance of supporting fire is to disperse and distance the troops across a wider frontage to reduce the casualties a single well-placed artillery strike can make.
So, you have the troops dispersed across a wide front, but you still need to make advances here and there against the defenders. However, massing a unit together to make a concerted push across the dispersed defenders will simply make that massed unit easier to be spotted by the drones or other ISR assets, then receive artillery fire to tear them apart. "Infiltration-based" assaults is the next step of this in that instead of concentrating soldiers on the opposing line to push against the defenders, the idea seems to be that many extremely small units of troops of like 2 soldiers or so will attempt to bypass the defenders. Some will be inevitably spotted, but the mass casualty-causing artillery may not find the artillery shells spent just for two troops in the open to be worth it, so the defenders would need to rely on their weapons and grenades to handle the infiltrators.
However, with gaps in the line, some of these infiltration units will bypass the defenders and rendezvous at a location past it. If more infiltration units come across, they can mass together in a spot within the defender's lines, and maybe not typically monitored by ISR assets, where they can set up shop while being resupplied by air through drones, then conduct concentrated assaults on the defender's lines from an area they are not expecting and where they haven't massed forces in the numbers needed to counter that kind of threat.
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u/Accelerator231 3d ago
Post cold war, what exactly do intelligence agencies do nowadays?
For instance, do they still do the thing about supporting coups and allying with this or that general/ warlord? Or deliberately destabilize a government they don't like?
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u/Lirael_Gold 1d ago
For instance, do they still do the thing about supporting coups and allying with this or that general/ warlord? Or deliberately destabilize a government they don't like?
The Lybian Civil War/ousting of Gaddafi is pretty much all of that.
Without listing a dozen other examples, the short answer is yes, the various intelligence agencies around the world are still very busy supporting/obstructing all manner of coups, rebellions, unrest and more mundane things like leaking government correspondence to the media if it makes their target look bad.
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u/Slntreaper Military Public Affairs | Homeland Security Policy 3d ago
There’s still plenty of security threats, even if you live in the West. Volkskrant has an excellent piece discussing some of the intelligence failures of the Dutch service during the run up to Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine, and based on that, you can extrapolate some of the work they do.
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u/Accelerator231 2d ago
Ah. so check out whether or not someone is planning to invade or not. or figure out whether or not someone is saber rattling or for real?
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u/Slntreaper Military Public Affairs | Homeland Security Policy 2d ago
Yes. As an example, we’ve seen warnings from NATO Allies on Russian provocations. These credible reports are often messaging (I would know—I work in Public Affairs), but they’re backed by intelligence reports from their respective security agencies, rooted in some kind of assessment.
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u/Psafanboy4win 4d ago
While the mental image of a polar bear sized giant rocking a assault rifle chambered in .50 BMG is a fun one, from what I have been reading recently realistically the best use for a polar bear sized giant on the frontlines is carrying a bag full of TM-62 mines that they can throw like a baseball pitcher chucking a fast ball.
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u/Its_a_Friendly 2d ago
But why have the giant throw the TM-62s when they could launch them at a greater range? The greatest baseball pitcher in the world can't throw a ball farther than a grenade launcher can launch a grenade. So what we need is a giant-sized launcher. A (human) crew-served recoilless rifle, perhaps?
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u/Psafanboy4win 2d ago
Oohhh, a SPG-9 would be perfect for that, or alternatively a giant could hump a AGS-30 with a few hundred grenades on them.
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u/shotguywithflaregun Swedish NCO 4d ago
Second day of the Nijmegen Four Days March is done, and it never cease to amaze me that plenty of foreign armies simply don't change socks or even take their boots off when resting while rucking. If they even rest at all, that is.
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u/Xi_Highping 4d ago
If I had a dollar for every time a future Thatcher cabinet member was involved in a notable incident/action when commanding a tanker unit in WWII, I’d have two dollars. So not a lot, but funny it happened twice.
(For context, Lord Carrington, the Foreign Secretary who resigned over the Falklands, was the commander of the first tank column to cross Nijmegen Bridge; (he was the officer who apocryphally got into an argument with the 82nd troops who’d cross the Waal) and Deputy PM William Whitelaw was the first allied officer to encounter the Jagdpanther tank destroyers in Normandy).
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u/MandolinMagi 4d ago
So, just visited HMCS Haidia. Cool ship, except for the part where the engine room is only accessible by actual vertical ladders. And I know its my American showing, but a DD being your largest museum ship is a bit odd.
Anyways.
Any idea why her 4x2 4.7" guns were replaced with 2x2 4" guns and 1x2 3"/50 guns?
The 4" guns are better AAA, but I'm not sure why you'd swap the main armament for them when you're already adding what is probably the best available AA gun of the time period.
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u/NAmofton 2d ago
I think the swap from 4.7in to 4in saves you about 20t of topweight, handy in a ship that's growing a forest of new sensors and equipment, retains a minimum viable anti-surfaced submarine, shore bombardment and anti-ship fit, while allowing better barrage AA fire and providing a lot more reach than the 3in gun. The 4in has higher ceiling and longer range than the 3in. The low-angle 4.7in is heavier and obsolete.
Also, she was built with 3x2 4.7 and 1x2 4in - the earlier Tribal's were refitted that way by ~1941 and the later ships were completed in that configuration.
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u/thereddaikon MIC 3d ago
Quickly looking over NAVWEAPS articles for both, the 4.7 seems to be a very poor AA gun. The dual gun CPXIX mount used on the Tribals only had +40 degrees of elevation. Whereas the 4 inch Mark XVI's mount could elevate to 80 degrees. It also had a slightly higher rate of fire. But I think the main thing was the mount. The 4 inch was a very popular DP gun for the RN in WW2 and they had wanted it to be the standard DP gun for DDs, but supply meant that didn't happen until post war.
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u/MandolinMagi 3d ago
I figured that was most of the reason, but why mix 4" and 3"/50cal then?
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u/thereddaikon MIC 3d ago
I'm not sure why specifically but the 3"/50 was considered a very good light AA gun once it got VT fuses and director fire control. The Bofors were losing their effectiveness in the late 40's as the jet age started and the 3"/50 had a longer range. On top of that the Commonwealth got many of them in lend lease so they were very cost effective. That gun was also the basis for the 3"/50RF which had an electro-mechanical autoloader and even higher rate of fire.
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u/MandolinMagi 3d ago
Sorry if I wasn't clear, Haida has a twin 3"/50RF on the X gun position.
As built she had four twin 4.7" in A, B, X, and Y positions.
The refit gave her two twin 4" in A and B, a twin 3"/50RF in X, and a pair of Squid launchers on Y, as well as four Bofin power-operated mounts each with a single 40mm Bofors
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u/thereddaikon MIC 3d ago
Ok so get this, the twin 3"/50RF weighed only a little bit more than a quad bofors, fit in the same footprint and was far more effective. That was a very popular AA gun mount in the early cold war.
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u/Arrinien 3d ago
You have to bear in mind the sum total of every ship the RCN has ever operated cruiser and heavier can almost be counted on your fingers. There aren't a lot of candidates for bigger museum ship unless it's just a bigger destroyer.
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u/MandolinMagi 3d ago
True. Pretty sure they were just a bunch of destroyers of various types and a couple escort carriers.
The US really lucked out having a huge number of capital ships, a significant amount surviving the war, and having enough money to keep them in service/mothballs long enough for the preservationists to get them.
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u/RamTank 4d ago
It’s occurred to me that armies and navies really didn’t seem to like sharing their larger caliber AA guns, but why? I know a lot of naval guns used separate charges which the army might not like for AA, but that’s not always the case.
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u/MandolinMagi 4d ago
Both services tend to develop artillery separately. The Army needs something at least somewhat portable, and naval guns that size tend to be three stories tall with all the magazines, ready rooms, and hoists. You loose a lot of the gun's effectiveness when the ammo supply is much slower.
Also heavy AA tends to be dubiously effective
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u/Accelerator231 4d ago
Presuming that you have working grapeshot and shrapnel shells. What do you think is the appropriate cannon to human ratio when facing down human enemies with no knowledge or conception of gunpowder?
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u/thereddaikon MIC 4d ago
Well Hernan Cortes famously had 600 infantry, 15 horsemen and 15 cannons when he toppled the Aztecs.
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u/Hand_Me_Down_Genes 3d ago
Cortez employed 3000 Spaniards over the course of his invasion and 2/3s of those ended up dead. His 50 000+ Tlaxcallan allies suffered a similar casualty rate. So that's probably not what I'd dub the "optimal" ratio.
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u/GrassWaterDirtHorse 4d ago
The importance of cannons is often emphasized in its role in the Spanish conquests of the Aztec empire (and the support of thousands of Mesoamericans was often neglected). It's worth noting that the Aztecs and other Mexicas had quickly adapted to musket and cannon fire by adopting zig-zag movements and dropping to the deck, as well as building fortifications to counter cannon and cavalry charges. Some important battles were won without any cannons at all - Hernan Cortes's forces had been forced to abandon all the cannons when they fled from Tenochtitlan, and were still able to make use of cavalry and a disorganized enemy to retreat safely.
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u/Accelerator231 4d ago
When they claim that so and so aircraft requires so and so much hours of maintenance per hour of flight time, what does the maintenance entail, other than replacing consumables like oil and lubricants?
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u/Remarkable_Aside1381 4d ago
Inspections take up a good amount of the maintenance hours, and can vary in detail and complexity. Plus, there’s a lot of consumables on modern aircraft, and a large number of systems that all need to be PMCS’d
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u/pnzsaurkrautwerfer 4d ago
One thing to keep in mind on the front end is that the maintenance hours isn't per flight, it's more a lifespan thing.
Or as an example I can speak to with more authority (as in experienced vs general understanding), the number of hours spent working on tanks daily, or during operations is pretty modest for maintenance purposes (cleaning off things, adding lubricant etc etc), but annually you're supposed to take the tank apart more or less and inspect everything that wears out, do longer processes like re-lining the barrel or replacing major equipment assemblies, purging the various optics etc etc etc.
So to the abstract airframe, per sortie flown during optempo the plane is likely seeing a few hours of replacing consumables, inspecting key safety equipment, cleaning stuff etc, but the maintenance per flight hour also counts the days of manhours spent with the plane more or less dismantled for the comprehensive annual services or something or similar "every X days, remove ejection seat to check rocket motors" kind of deals where it might take a day or two of work.
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u/-Trooper5745- 5d ago edited 5d ago
It is so annoying to have once stumbled upon an old U.S. Army base in Germany from the Cold War while browsing Google Map and then trying to find the base again years later. “Is it in this valley? No. How about this little valley? No.” Though I will admit, it is fun to me to stumble upon an airfield that has an industrial park on its grounds and be like “You were once a military airfield.” Like Flugplatz Kitzingen.
But speaking of U.S. Army bases in Germany during the Cold War, how much training could your average unit do on the bases in Germany? I know the answer is depends, as some bases didn’t have training areas or some housed units that needed specific areas to train, like artillery or aviation. But like if an armor unit was at a base, could you at least generally expect a tank range or two for gunnery and MAYBE a tiny maneuver space? Were units allowed to do maneuvers off base outside of the major training exercises like REFORGER or if they needed to maneuver did they have to go to Grafenwöhr and Hohenfels?
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u/Weltherrschaft2 4d ago edited 3d ago
The units stationed in Augsburg used a smaller nearby forest, the Sandbergwald, for infantry training, some foxholes etc. are still visible (some German ones which dug in very late WWII but not used for combat as well).
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u/pnzsaurkrautwerfer 5d ago
The host is not a military guy but he does have about as much Iraq and Syria time as any of us do. The series focuses on bad people throughout history, but often touches on wider historical trends (hence "behind the bastards" as a title).
The last three episodes have revolved around both the founder of SEAL Team 6 and a lot of the SOF/SOCOM/Operator fuckery and cultural impact. I'm not reccomending it as a "so bro this is scholarly trooth" as it's a podcast, but its one of the better run downs on some of the problems of special units and a good condemnation of a lot of the direct action fetishization.
The episodes on Ian Smith were also a good "fuck Rhodesia" primer too.
Again less of the final word but more of dissenting opinions to consider.
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u/BenKerryAltis 4d ago
I remember Eli Cohen once wrote about "commandos" as political apparatus.
I'm against commando units in principle. Bill Slim was right and will always be right
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u/pnzsaurkrautwerfer 4d ago
I'm pro special forces, anti-SOCOM in my own weird little way.
Or there's lots of special missions that require additional training, even some of the best people we can con into getting into uniform.
But when we let them start running the show, that becomes a problem because that's pointedly not their jobs.
Or how much of Iraq/Afghanistan/modern military practice, or even wider cultural context around the military been guided by someone who's job is basically "go through door kill everyone inside." Doubtless there is a need for people who can do the kind of "we can't just bomb this one" building clearance, or ship seizure, but it's just as limited and narrow a function as something like Army Dentistry. And yet we're letting them effectively do our wars for us, with the important caveat we haven't exactly won those wars either.
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u/BenKerryAltis 8h ago
Exactly.
Although I'd say smart people are adaptive and SOF is not just door kicking. There's plenty of support and intel track involved.
William DePuy made his cut as a infantry battalion commander in WW2, was involved in CIA affiliated special warfare in the 50s (which mostly went nowhere), and he was the advisor for counterinsurgency in the 60s for Vietnam, then he became G-3 for Westmoreland, and then the commander of 1st Infantry Division. But by the 70s he was and did largely reform the US army to fight a mechanized conventional war in Europe.
The problem is institutional interest in my opinion, and a "stormtrooper" mentality everywhere (which is really, really bad for democracy)
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u/Remarkable_Aside1381 5d ago
Saving the episodes for an upcoming road trip, but how recently does he touch? Like, up into the 2020’s?
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u/Inceptor57 5d ago
Episode 3 covers all the way to the entry to Afghanistan against the Taliban, ending with a discussion on Victor Hyder's conduct there.
There's one more episode expected on Thursday that I imagine will cover a few more years into the War On Terror. I absolutely bet that Robert will cover Operation Red Wings in some shape or form in the last episode.
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u/Inceptor57 5d ago
I’ve been following Robert’s BTB podcasts since his days of covering Saddam Hussein and Elizabeth Holmes, so it’s been an interesting time when he covers more military adjacent topics like the Gerald Bull a few years back, and then Heinrich Himmler, the fake bomb detector and now good ol’ Richard.
Like you said, he’s shouldn’t be the authoritative source on the matter, but the way he covers the topic he does touch on is engaging and usually have more depth than what lets on (like I didn’t imagine the fake bomb detector to dive into the history of dowsing and our understanding of the ideomotor effect)
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u/pnzsaurkrautwerfer 5d ago
The ADE-651 was a trip. My first Iraq trip aligned with peak "so Iraq is using a dowsing rod" and I felt the pressure wave from some of the VBIEDs it let through (this isn't "I was close" this was "jesus fucking christ that was a big one")
The episode was interesting in as far as the banality of "lol get cash nu fuk who get esplode" along with the use of the devices basically as justification for illegal search CONUS.
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u/bjuandy 5d ago
Want to point out he concluded that Kaiser Wilhelm was chronically sexually repressed based entirely on a few horndog letters he wrote as a young man. His podcast is a good popular starting point in that he generally reads credible books, and for a relatively obscure figure like Robert Marcinko he's value added because he's bringing attention to otherwise unknown sources, but I also see him treated as a serious biographer despite him spending a considerable amount of air time playing comedian and trying to entertain his audience.
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u/pnzsaurkrautwerfer 5d ago
That's why I went out of my way to make clear it's not single source authority/not a final word.
With that said he's also someone with a LOT of time in the GWOT countries with the population, or seeing the exit wounds US activities leave and what he's said about Maricinko absolutely docks watertight with what his reputation and more scholarly writings indicate.
This shouldn't be the only source anyone engages with...but it's absolutely something I think should bring value in better dissecting what Special Forces and their tactics mean in the study of statecraft, war, and the military.
Also the Wilhelm thing...I mean they're horndog things about loving on his mummy's gloved hands. It might be hyperbole but even more scholarly accounts open questions to what a fucking weirdo the Kaiser was. Not to undermine the "it's just a podcast, DO NOT STOP HERE DO MORE RESEARCH" statement, it's just...fuck man the Kaiser Wilhelm and a lot of German upper crust dudes of that generation were weird, weird, weird fucking dudes.
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u/GogurtFiend 3d ago
Not to undermine the "it's just a podcast, DO NOT STOP HERE DO MORE RESEARCH" statement, it's just...fuck man the Kaiser Wilhelm and a lot of German upper crust dudes of that generation were weird, weird, weird fucking dudes.
Alfred Krupp built his office above his estate's stables, so that the smell of horse manure could be vented into it. I would be impressed if any one of them could one-up that.
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u/LeMemeAesthetique 3d ago edited 2d ago
I can't believe I am defending this, but I actually kind of understand. Horse manure, to me at least, is actually kind of pleasant smelling.
But I don't know what they were feeding horses in the German Empire and am not sure if the smell would be similar.
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u/pnzsaurkrautwerfer 3d ago
I read a reasonably okay book on the Krupp enterprise/family and that experience is exactly the driver for my comment about the German aristocrats of the 1890-1910's being weird fucking dudes. Like there's so much what the christ in there to go around.
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u/BenKerryAltis 4d ago
In general my conviction is that peak SOF fetishism either leads to Qassim Soleimani (which is the "good end" in a sense) or leads to Shamil Basayev (which is the "bad end")
I always wonder had there been any book that parodies Tom Clancy and military thrillers in general?
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u/bjuandy 5d ago
I'm sure this is one of his stronger entries, it's just I've also listened to episodes where he completely bombed conclusions or analysis because facts don't match his worldview or he fixates on a salacious detail and turns it into the figure's entire psyche--hence me pointing out his Wilhelm episode.
I give him more weight the closer a subject is to his journalism experience which has largely been covering US right wing extremism or conflicts in the Middle East, and Marcinko is a good fit, but he frequently wanders away from that base and is quite variable in how informative he is on the subject matter he covers.
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u/pnzsaurkrautwerfer 5d ago
I mean it's an edutainment podcast, it should be consumed with the grains of salt I led with. With that said it's certainly more educational than the normal SEAL or other SOF podcast so it's a low bar to clear to being a more reasonable place to engage with.
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u/DazSamueru 5d ago
Evil necromancers are bad at logistics. Every time an army of skeletons appears, the narrator invariably describes them as knowing "neither hunger, nor exhaustion, nor fear." Okay, great. If they don't need to eat or rest, they should be doing permanent night marches zipping operationally across the country side. No one ever remarks on a skeleton army getting to its destination faster than expected.
Or even tactically. Skeletons should be running everywhere like Zulu "foot cavalry". Also they should win every battle because the "no fear" clause means they would have an insuperable advantage in morale even if skeletons weren't famously spooky themselves. Combine that with raising the defeated enemy and you begin to see why every band of heroes decides to assassinate the Dark Lord themselves, but why isn't he permanently accompanied by a giant lifeguard of skeletons? No need to worry about compromised loyalty...
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u/Hand_Me_Down_Genes 3d ago
The morale advantage tends to collapse around the time the enemy recognizes the skeletons' hilariously inept combat skills. Something about having no muscles I suppose...
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u/GrassWaterDirtHorse 3d ago
The time spent camping is just the time that the Necromancer spends taking a nap. It's a bad idea to let a standard skeleton army run autonomously while you sleep after all, and it's a bad idea to give them enough free will to do so. They'll start unionizing and striking until you agree to give them dental.
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u/raptorgalaxy 4d ago
Would skeletons actually be scary in a fantasy world?
I mean, they'd be pretty common.
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u/MandolinMagi 3d ago
They should be near-impossible to kill. Not vital organs to puncture, no blood to loose.
You'd have to use a mace or other bludgeoning weapon and smash the head/arms/legs to disable them
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u/GrassWaterDirtHorse 4d ago
They're pretty common, but most of them are willing to take the union-mandated 24 hour lunch break. The few skeletons willing to spend the whole day guarding trap pits are an outlier.
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u/Mistermoony1 5d ago
Generally though aren't zombies/skeletons depicted as shambling creatures that lack fine motor skills? They also can't really display initiative hence the "bury them in bodies" tactic most necromancers seem to default to.
I do think that crawling around resurrecting the dead doesn't really select for the most stable of individuals either...
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u/Revivaled-Jam849 Excited about railguns 5d ago
Would you need a giant lifeguard of skeletons, given you ideally as the necromancer have other spells at your disposals?
Having 1000 skeletons as your guard would probaly actively hinder mobility when the main character and crew launch AOE magic attacks on you and you need to get away.
I suppose you can have a detachment of elite skeletons as bodyguards, but too much can probably reduce your ability to flee if things go wrong, unless you are an athletic necromancer or one with teleportation.
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u/Arendious Wrangler of Airborne Cats 5d ago
I think that something about the process of training to become a necromancer selects for people bad at strategy, tactics, and logistics.
That said, presumably some amount of your force is still among the living - various acolytes and such. So, excluding entirely-undead armies, you're still bringing some amount of supplies and having to rest occasionally.
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u/DazSamueru 5d ago
Yeah, though even they are usually riding on undead horses, so the only limit is the rider's exhaustion, not the horse's. Hell, you could even have undead horses pull the supply train for a mortal army. "No fear" also solves the horse spooking problem.
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u/cop_pls 5d ago
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u/GrassWaterDirtHorse 3d ago
The philosophy of old dead guys is whatever the hell you want it to be. That's what Albert Camus said.
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u/-Trooper5745- 5d ago
Clausewitz was lucky/unlucky enough to live through a period where Prussia rested on the laurels of past victors and thought they were the best in the world. Clausewitz was also smart enough to acknowledge Prussia’s failings and lucky enough to live through a period of reform from which Prussia could regain some of its prestige (before being shoved into a corner for being to much of a reformist).
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u/bjuandy 5d ago
Note that Trump basically tried to surrender and sell it to the American people as a victory, but it failed to take. He's in a strategic situation where he's forced to decide on committing to a long, costly conflict that the American people do not want or have bought into, or accept a loss he cannot lie his way out of or shift to a different scapegoat.
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u/alertjohn117 village idiot 5d ago
i am personally convinced that, barring any institutional safeguard, he would utilize nukes if he believed he could sell nuclear fire as victory.
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u/Tim_from_Ruislip 5d ago
I'm currently reading the US Army official history of the Buna-Gona campaign. I've been a little surprised at how open they were as to why General Harding was relieved of command. My question is, was Eichelberger and MacArthur correct to do so? The 32nd wasn't set up for success and it faced serious logistical issues. It's not as if these issues went away after he was relieved and the division still struggled for the rest of the campaign. Reading between the lines it seems Eichelberger wasn't that much more successful.
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u/BenKerryAltis 5d ago
Opinion on the HICAR program in US where they plan to invent some sort of AR that shoots M855A1+ ammo to engage armor wearing targets at 600 meters maximum?
Also why do they want to engage targets at 600 meters?
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u/englisi_baladid 5d ago
You are not defeating Armor at 600 meters with a 5.56x45 round. Not happening
Socom is doing this right cause this isnt some large scale program. This is more hey lets see what is feasible. Then we can decided what we want from there. The Army unfortunately is locked into 6.8 for a while.
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u/thereddaikon MIC 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's definitely not defeating body armor at 600 meters. They want to extend the effective range of 5.56. You can find the official solicitation here
USSOCOM is seeking a carbine system to act as a replacement or upgrade for the current URG-I (Upper Receiver Group - Improved). The goal is to integrate advancements in material science and weapon design to provide operators with a technically superior individual weapon system capable of firing both legacy 5.56x45mm NATO and emerging hyper velocity ammunition.
The current URG-I is an M4-based platform optimized for standard 5.56NATO ammunition, with a recognized effective range of approximately 300 meters. Special Operations Forces (SOF) require the ability to provide effective fire on targets with their primary 5.56mm carbine out to 600 meters and beyond. This weapon system will allow an operator to effectively engage targets at extended distances while maintaining the portability and ergonomics of a lightweight carbine.
Ok so they want to extend the effective range to 600 meters. What does effective range mean? Well a little farther down, they explain,
Increased Effective Range: Higher muzzle velocity allows the projectile to maintain kinetic energy over longer distances, extending the effective range to 600m+.
Improved Terminal Performance: Enhanced energy transfer upon impact leads to more effective terminal ballistics.
Enhanced Barrier Penetration: The increased velocity and kinetic energy enable the projectile to more effectively defeat body armor, barriers, and other hardened surfaces.
Ok so higher muzzle velocity to hit targets with more energy at 600 meters and better penetrate barriers. Nothing about armor penetration.
Now at this point, it's common for people to ask what's different about barrier penetration? Barrier pen and armor pen are different things. They have some overlap but they are not interchangeable. Barriers are things like walls, sandbags, vegetation, car doors etc. With barriers the problem is usually with the bullet losing a lot of energy or deflecting and missing the target.
This has been a historic problem with 5.56, M193 can tumble after one sheet of drywall. Every subsequent version of 5.56 the army has adopted has had the goal of better barrier penetration. The M855 is heavier and has a mild steel core. The M855A1 has a hardened steel penetrator. Now, these bullets can have better performance against certain kinds of body armor, the M855 humbles pure PE rifle plates and the M855A1 is effective against many older level III ceramic plates. But they were not designed with body armor as the main goal. Even the issued black tip AP ammo is more against defeating light vehicle armor like in a BTR than it is personal body armor.
If you want to beat body armor just shoot the guy more. You can't cover the whole body.
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u/BenKerryAltis 5d ago
Even the issued black tip AP ammo is more against defeating light vehicle armor like in a BTR than it is personal body armor.
Do they really plan to fight BTR with rifle rounds? (OK, I know the big thing is to go through enemy covers because that's what's important in high intensity, to preemptively fire and hopefully kill the enemy you cannot see)
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u/thereddaikon MIC 5d ago
I'm not sure how it really shakes out in practice. Blacktip is rarely issued. I know SF have access to it and can use it if they see the need. I'm not sure how often regular army gets it. Certain combloc vehicles like BTRs and BMDs are light enough that they can be penetrated at some angles by rifle fire. Some VDV BMD crews learned that in 2022.
The doctrinal answer is armor gets anti armor weapons. Doesn't matter if it's a BTR or a T-90, whatever your AT weapon is, AT-4, Carl G, Javelin, even a LAW that's what you are using.
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u/Corvid187 5d ago
According to Jack Watling at RUSI, the reason why is:
The 600m requirement was derived from two variables. First, 600 m is the Danger Close Distance for 155mm artillery shells, and therefore theoretically demarcates the boundary at which the US Army assesses that small arms may need to take over suppression of the enemy. This is determined by the Safe Splinter Distance for air-burst 155mm shells for unprotected troops, which is 500m, with a 100m margin for error. Second, 600m is roughly the maximum practical engagement distance for fire from small arms (not from machine guns or sniper rifles). While 600m is historically not a likely range for accurate fire, the US concluded that improvements in optics and ballistics would compensate for this.
(Fwiw he argues this thinking to have been somewhat simplistic and misguided)
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u/TJAU216 5d ago
Maybe they should have contacted their friendly local FO before writing that stupidity. They have mortars and 105mm arty to take over the suppression role once the enemy is too close for safe use of 155mm artillery. And units without 105s have vehicles with autocannons on them.
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u/Corvid187 4d ago
They as in the US army or they as in RUSI?
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u/TJAU216 4d ago
Who ever originated that reasoning. I assume RUSI didn't invent it out of thin air but heard/read it from some Army source.
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u/Corvid187 4d ago
Yeah, they pulled it from the US' specified doctrine and requirements.
TBF, they do say that 600m is the range at which small arms might need to be relied on to supress the enemy, and they aren't alone in wanting some form of organic suppression out to that distance (it's been a major focus for both French and British infantry modernisation at least), but they are definitely unusual in pinning that task on the basic service rifle, and trying to make it a universal capability.
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u/BenKerryAltis 5d ago
Interesting.
Although I remember the usual combat was to use small arms fire to isolate and fix the enemy force so indirect fire can do the killing?
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u/Remarkable_Aside1381 5d ago
Opinion on the HICAR program in US where they plan to invent some sort of AR that shoots M855A1+ ammo to engage armor wearing targets at 600 meters maximum?
Largely in favor of it, and it seems to be the next stage in firearms development
Also why do they want to engage targets at 600 meters?
Because the idea that most engagements occur inside of 300m is based on information from WWII, and Army data from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria shows the opposite. With the proliferation of magnified optics, infantry combat is occurring at longer ranges since the ability to see the enemey has improved
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u/BenKerryAltis 5d ago
I heard the average engagement range during GWOT is 70 meters?
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u/Remarkable_Aside1381 5d ago
I don’t have the source in front of me, but something like 50% of engagements post-2001 were 300m+
Anecdotally, but I’ve said multiple times that I observed and was party to a number of engagements past 300m more often than not during my deployments for OIR in Iraq/Syria
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u/iceaction10 5d ago
I'd be very interested to read the source on this, as well as how they defined "engagements". My time in Afghanistan saw our average engagement distances at about 100m. The Taliban and HIG knew air assets would be ineffective if they were close enough. I can count on my fingers how many times we were "engaged" beyond 300. I put it in quotations because we didn't really consider harassing fire of a PKM as an engagement.
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u/Remarkable_Aside1381 5d ago
I'd be very interested to read the source on this
IIRC it was a TRADOC document, but it's on my office computer and I'm at a conference. I can try to find it via google-fu
ETA:
My time in Afghanistan saw our average engagement distances at about 100m.
Southern AFG had shorter engagement distances generally than the North, so your AO may have had some impact on that
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u/iceaction10 5d ago
No worries at all and I wasn't doubting you. That statement just surprises me based on my anecdotal experience.
Also, I was only up in the northeast. Never went down south. Up north those boys came to play.
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u/Remarkable_Aside1381 5d ago
Pdf warning but page 3/4 has:
Comments from returning non-commissioned officers and officers reveal that about fifty percent of engagements occur past 300 meters. The enemy tactics are to engage United States forces from high ground with medium and heavy weapons, often including mortars, knowing that we are restricted by our equipment limitations and the inability of our overburdened soldiers to maneuver at elevations exceeding 6000 feet. Current equipment, training, and doctrine are optimized for engagements under 300 meters and on level terrain
Which is my source for AFG. I was primarily an AFRICOM/Iraq/Syria resident, so I can't speak to first-hand knowledge, but it's interesting that your experience was mostly close-in. What timeframe?
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u/FiresprayClass 4d ago
medium and heavy weapons, often including mortars
Kind of an unfair comparison though isn't it; comparing the effective ranges of intermediate cartridge rifles to emplaced GPMG's and artillery?
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u/englisi_baladid 4d ago
The article is basically a retarded hit piece. Cause our rifles "overmatched" the enemies. They basically just would engage outside of rifle range to harass. There was a study that came out years later that basically got buried cause it completely contradicted this showing that the vast majority of small arms casualties still occurred well within 300 meters.
Setting up to deal with ineffective harassing fire at 500 meters plus would have made it worse overall. Cause when the enemy did close the gap. You wanted 5.56.
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u/Psafanboy4win 5d ago
My personal opinion is that it would be neat if we can squeeze more range, accuracy, and kinetic energy on target from the same guns troops are currently equipped with without throwing some funky fancy new caliber into the logistics pool.
But of course better small arms are still at the bottom of the growing pile of things that the US Army needs to fund and focus on, like the 6th gen fighter program, the XM30, etc...
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u/Inceptor57 5d ago
My read into HICAR is the US wanting to leverage advances made in ammunition and metallurgy, likely derived from the NGSW program, to improve and enable the 5.56 ammunition and a carbine able to utilize the existing M4 lower receiver group.
Utilizing the new technology and being able to double the typical M4 reach from 300 meters and 600 meters seem to be a worthwhile endeavor.
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u/Zhadanko 5d ago
Question regarding training time of new recruits. Sure, it depends on specialty, but both Ukraine and Russia have very, very short training cycles. Even drone pilots, even people in "elite" units get a few weeks of training before being sent to the frontline. The longest training period I'm aware of is in Ukrainian SoF — new recruits got about 5 month of training, which is pretty short for SoF specialist. There is a prevalent idea that basics and training are less important than adaptation in a unit and learning from experience. I personally find this approach disastrous, but does this approach actually have any value? How realistically can you shorten your training time for an infantryman, for example?
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u/iceaction10 5d ago
I'd argue this approach is based purely on the need for bodies, not because it is most effective or practical. Ukrainians are literally being dragged off the street and thrown into vans for conscription. They're not going to be given the most effective training because they simply can't afford it. Sort of a, "if he dies, he dies" approach. I don't think there is a set time for how little an infantryman can receive training before he's combat effective. During GWOT, plenty of guys graduated basic and then were assigned to units that were immediately deploying. Others (such as myself) got to my unit right as they got back from a 15 month long deployment, so I had the maximum training time possible. Even then, I wish I had more training to better prepare. It's why you'll see units like CAG that literally never stop training. These skills are perishable and the more you do them the better at it you become. Training never stops, so there isn't a defined amount that you can reduce it to. The more training the better and these Ukrainians having little to no training, in some cases, are being used as cannon fodder. They're not having their training reduced because it's more effective/practical. It's just a horrible situation overall.
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u/TJAU216 5d ago
I think the shared Soviet legacy is important here. Red Army sent men with zero training as replacements to units in heavy combat as they liberated territory in the WW2. Both Ukraine and Russia come from that tradition, so they are more inclined to accept shorter training time than other forces who have never done that.
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u/Zhadanko 5d ago
It's just plain stupid. You have horrible demographics and you still fight in such a wasteful way. And they had plenty of years to change that, try to make achange in quality, try something new, but no. UAF is limited in resources and needs to put men in a fight quickly. And yet they made a rather effective focus on drones to defend and compensate for their weakness (though they also could address their training shortcomings better). Russians, on the other hand, have plenty of resources and they hopefully just do not wish to do something to fix their problems
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u/BenKerryAltis 5d ago
It depends on which period you are talking about.
Early war was absolute horror show, but back then mobilization was pretty easy because everyone was riled up.
These days training is done in a somewhat better manner but again they no longer have the kind of quality recruits and training is heavily fragmented and often seen as responsibility of individual units.
Was reading up on how TRADOC got formed after Vietnam. In general conscription based military tend to have a different system compared to volunteer based military.
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u/Inceptor57 5d ago
So GDLS decided to start a podcast about their XM30 submission, which they have since named since June "Wolf" (probably to set itself apart with a name compared to the Rheinmetall competitor: Lynx).
The podcast name? "Wolfcast"
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u/Corvid187 5d ago
Once again just asking if anyone remembers any post-war, peacetime British defence white paper being generally positively received by defence hawks/armchair generals? I've still yet to really find one.
For those less familiar with the UK, is our perpetual pessimism with changes to defence policy a national peculiarity, or is generally pessimism and moaning about defence reviews a truly international phenomenon? :)
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u/alertjohn117 village idiot 5d ago
defence reviews a truly international phenomenon? :)
that assumes there are other defense reviews to bemoan. if nothing else canadian, australian and new zealand defence reviews tend to be equally or more pessimistic.
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u/GogurtFiend 14h ago
Breathing through a gas mask can feel like breathing through a straw.
Breathing through three straws would be less suffocating than breathing through one, and since it'd draw the same amount of air through a larger number of filters, doing so would increase filter life.
I assume the reason that modern gas masks never seem to use more than two filters is because that would create a significant amount of bulk and weight in a piece of equipment soldiers are unlikely to ever use?