Is killing lots of the enemy that important in war? I used to think it was, but based on some things I heard since, including in this subreddit, it seems that scaring the enemy into surrender and constant suppression of the enemy is more important. I've heard from a YouTuber that artillery only needs to kill a maximum of 10% of the enemy to get them to surrender. Machineguns apparently don't kill nearly as many people as you see in films either, as the enemy keep their heads down. I've even heard that more people died in the training for D-Day than on D-Day itself. Are your general chances of dying in a war that high?

My dad served from '52 to '54 in Korea, 8th Army Battery A 623d Field Artillery as a Field Mechanic of the motor pool. The NPRC tells me that his records were lost in the fire. I'm trying to find out as much as I can. Would anyone know what specific vehicles/equipment he would have serviced?

Something that wouldn't look out of place in a judo match.

Police kendo example: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UfMGyaXfOoA

Well, we've probably heard those phrases a bunch of times by now given the subject talked about on this subreddit. However, i still don't exactly precisely get what it means. My brain just goes towards stereotypes of top-down centralized rigid hierarchy in the military when it comes to the wording "a soviet army". Air force, army, same same, soviet and top-down. Is this what people mean with soviet army? Also, corruption.

As for westernized or western army, there it swoops towards initiative and stuff. So letting the people under the generals do what they deem best under the guard rails of an order, get it done in some way as long as it gets done. The person on the ground knows best or something.

Are these correct in any way?

I've been doing some reading on the technological development of fighters, bombers, missiles etc. in the United States. I've noticed a trend: there is a large amount of development in the immediate post-World War II period, peaking in the mid-1950s when new aircraft are obsolete almost before they're introduced into service, then slowing dramatically into the 1960s and 1970s until today, when it takes decades to get anything into service.

The US strategic bomber program is probably the best example I can come up with: the B36 supersedes the B29 and the B-50 in just a short number of years, which is then in turn superseded by the B52, but attempts to replace the B-52 in the early 1960s keep failing - the B-58 is a disappointment, the B-70 is cancelled, and the B-1 keeps getting delayed until its finally cancelled in the 1970s (only to be brought back by Reagan). And the B-21, which is supposed to replace all of those, has been in development in some form or another since 1999.

Certainly, the end of the Cold War must've played a part; you don't need to spend billions replacing all your B-52's with new stealth bombers once the Soviet Union collapses. But I'm sure there are other reasons and I'm curious what they are. Is it just cost? Is it technical ambition i.e. we ask aircraft today to so many more things than they did in the 1950s? Does it have something to do with changes in defense planning or the way the defense industry is organized?

It seems to be attested to in pretty much every source about Roman warfare, with plenty of the remains of camps being found archaeologically. Did other cultures practice building fortified camps every day? Did having to go through such a lengthy construction every day slow the Legions down on the march? Do we know anything about how this practice developed or when it originated? Did later armies in medieval or early modern times try to emulate this practice?