[HN Gopher] Keys to winning high intensity conflicts
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Keys to winning high intensity conflicts
Author : mhb
Score : 42 points
Date : 2023-02-28 19:30 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (austinvernon.site)
(TXT) w3m dump (austinvernon.site)
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| [dead]
| klooney wrote:
| > Even if the Russians got to fight in their perfect scenario of
| an artillery slugfest, the US Army could still defeat the fully-
| mobilized Soviet Union. US artillery and armor could cut down any
| combination of human waves and simple tank attacks the Soviets
| could manage.
|
| Important asterisk- this war was never fought and this is all
| speculation.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Also, the European NATO/Soviet theatre was supposed to be
| faught in a nuclear hellscape. The reason BMPs and T-72s are so
| flimsy, is not because they are "bad". They were designed to be
| used with ABC packages and crawl through corridors already
| nuked "clean" by nuclear artillery. Even NATO anti-tank
| helicoptors would have a hard time going in when there at any
| moment could be a nuclear fireball in your path.
|
| We will never find out if they are any good for what they were
| designed. Most of them are destroyed now.
| pelasaco wrote:
| We know everything about the US systems, tactics and weapons, but
| we dont anything about the chinese.. thats for sure an advantage
| to the chineses..
| Loughla wrote:
| Do we?
| ericmay wrote:
| That's an awfully interesting assumption.
| klodolph wrote:
| > It is also challenging to produce and transport the mind-
| boggling mass inaccurate weapons require.
|
| "Garden path sentence."
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| how so? is "mass inaccurate weapons" a term I'm unfamiliar
| with?
| michael1999 wrote:
| It is also challenging to produce and transport the mind-
| boggling mass THAT inaccurate weapons require.
|
| The sheer mass of steel and explosives that have to run on
| railways to the Ukrainian front means inevitable shell-
| hunger. The war is being fought in a kind of slow-motion
| since materiel is the limiting reagent. I found the author's
| explanation helpful to find the wisdom in the fancy high-tech
| US path.
| jessaustin wrote:
| If you really didn't read this as "the mind-boggling mass
| _that_ inaccurate weapons require ", QED.
| amluto wrote:
| It's hard to partially parse the sentence until the very end.
| If you remove the word "require", then "mass" seems more
| likely to be an adjective, along the lines of "mass
| destruction" or "mass casualty".
|
| Inserting a "that" would help. ...mass _that_ inaccurate...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| wow is drone warfare going to go under RAPID evolution, but...
|
| https://austinvernon.site/blog/starshipsuperweapon.html
|
| Nuts and bolts: if the economics mature Starship can deliver
| kinetic weaponry that is more effective and cheaper than any
| major artillery round within 30 minutes of anywhere in the world.
|
| ... that makes big assumptions about achieving 10$/kg, but likely
| with the capabilities it enables, the pentagon would be happy
| with 50-100$/kg.
|
| Starship is a pure economic strategic weapon. It is very
| difficult to engineer some sort of launch platform with such
| (purported) economics. While the US is usually the one playing
| loss leader in weapons usage, Starship would reverse this against
| any nation state.
|
| It's not just artillery, imagine drones and troop delivery in
| 30-60 minutes around the world.
|
| BUT, we'll see. Orbital test of Starship missed 2022, it's
| supposed to be attempted soon?
|
| Starship also enables orbital battle platforms with the mass it
| can load.
|
| Alas, militarization of space seems inevitable. One of the fermi
| filters? everyone has nukes, someone gets to space, and has
| strategic nuke delivery advantage (you can delivery a nuke from
| orbit to surface a lot faster than an intercontinental arc), that
| may trigger the nuke exchange before the space militarization
| finances a piggybacked space economy.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > imagine drones and troop delivery in 30-60 minutes around the
| world.
|
| To win the fight, you have to get to the fight. Starship re-
| entry would be challenging in contested air space.
|
| > Starship also enables orbital battle platforms with the mass
| it can load.
|
| Some ball bearings in a counter-orbit would be a good
| asymmetric countermeasure.
| Qem wrote:
| > Some ball bearings in a counter-orbit would be a good
| asymmetric countermeasure.
|
| Artificial Kessler syndrome probably the cheapest superweapon
| available. Probably won't require even an unreasonable amount
| of bearings. Just enough to shred some satellites do generate
| more shrapnel.
| pphysch wrote:
| You don't "win" a world war in the nuclear era. Everyone loses,
| guaranteed.
| hash872 wrote:
| India and Pakistan fought a war in 1999 despite both sides
| having nuclear weapons, if I'm not mistaken
| pphysch wrote:
| "World war" being the operative term. Border skirmishes are
| not.
| Xylakant wrote:
| Afghanistan won a war against both nuclear powers, first
| against the UDSSR, later against the USA.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| when I see statements like this I suspect (disclaimer - I
| have zero knowledge, apart from reading the news) that
| america lost the war and definately not.. Afganistan won
| the war, due to fact there was politics involved in setting
| the objectives
|
| lets face it, if america _REALLY_ wanted to win at all
| costs (like the british did) Afganistan would be a complete
| and utter wasteland - but the political costs would have
| been too high
| Xylakant wrote:
| Almost no war is won by entirely defeating the opponent.
| Most wars end because the costs of continuing the war
| exceed the acceptable threshold for one party. The
| Taliban got what they fought for - they won. (Whether the
| Taliban represent the majority of the Afghan Population
| is a separate matter)
| [deleted]
| jessaustin wrote:
| Lots of this seems plausible at a glance, but overall it is
| highly theoretical. USA hasn't "won" a war since 1945. That
| result was mostly determined by USSR. The USA portion of the
| result was determined by a quickly-assembled force of farmboys
| and factory workers led by the same rather than by a professional
| standing army led by the Pentagon. The Pentagon is incapable of
| developing weapons and tactics that win wars, because for its
| entire existence it has been judged by a different metric. We
| should expect conflicts over which the Pentagon has some
| influence to be extended and made more resource-intensive than
| even the marketing can justify. The Pentagon always does that,
| because that's how armaments manufacturers make more money.
|
| We should avoid wars in general, but we should especially avoid a
| world war with China, Russia, India, and the rest of their many
| allies. We got beaten by the Taliban, but if we fight 3 billion
| people we'll get curb-stomped.
| SlickNixon wrote:
| The Pentagon was completed in 1943. There may be some relation
| between your "farmboys and factory works" and the organization
| that occupies it now.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| You should brush up a bit on your military history. The
| standard combat-readiness training time was 8+ months during
| WW2 (see [0]), which puts it quite a distance from a "quickly-
| assembled force of farmboys and factory workers".
|
| Similarly, the USSR's victory and WW2 as a whole is much more
| accurately called an allied victory. The US played a
| significant role in supporting soviet industrial capacity with
| programs like Lend-Lease that allowed them to actually fight
| the war. Other nations contributed to the war in their own
| ways. It's not a contest for who deserves all the credit.
|
| [0]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7wwo7w/how_l...
| seanw444 wrote:
| First off, India is not friends with China. They're generally
| aligned with the west.
|
| And also, a world war doesn't mean USA vs everyone else. It
| means USA+UN+NATO vs. Russia, China, and their respective
| vassal states. Worst case (and most likely) scenario is
| everyone loses. But we wouldn't be exclusively curb-stomped.
| jessaustin wrote:
| India happily talks to and does business with everyone. (In
| Pakistan's case one might not say "happily"?) Over the last
| year, it has not taken part in the economic sanctions that
| USA and its vassals have attempted to impose. Both India and
| Russia have profited from this decision. We can expect India
| and similar nations throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin
| America to continue to pursue their own interests. Therefore,
| they will form part of our opponents' industrial base. They
| won't attack our forces until we attack theirs, but they
| won't be any more "aligned" with us than they are right now.
|
| Since much of our own industrial base is in China, our
| military will prosper while the rest of us will lack most
| human comforts. Some portion of our military will be diverted
| from the battlefield to curtail the resulting unrest. We will
| lose, much more painfully than we lost in Korea or Syria or
| any of the intervening wars. Alaska, Hawaii, and all Pacific
| territories will be gone. We'll lose most of our foreign
| bases. The dollar will be worthless. American-owned
| intellectual property will disappear. Australia will be
| (re-)colonized. Germany will re-militarize, and Europe will
| remember why that's bad. (One might expect that also of
| Japan, but they are probably too geriatric now.) The portion
| of Ukraine that Russia doesn't take will be taken by Poland.
| Israel will abandon us in favor of the Saudi/UAE axis, but
| that group will itself decide to coexist with regional rivals
| rather than follow us down the drain. USA itself might split
| into several pieces, none of which would be capable of the
| sort of excessive militarism we've inflicted on the world for
| the last 120 years. So, not totally bad.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| [dead]
| toss1 wrote:
| >>USA hasn't "won" a war since 1945. That result was mostly
| determined by USSR.
|
| You seem to have missed the fact that the USSR no longer
| exists; the cold war was most certainly "won" by the US,
| primarily by outspending, outdeveloping, and outmaneuvering the
| Soviets in the 'peace'.
|
| All the other wars since 1945 that you cite the US as "losing"
| were fought under extreme Rules of Engagement restrictions for
| political reasons, nothing like the terms of any more all-out
| war. The Taliban didn't beat us, we got bored and left, and
| they quickly defeated the Afghan govt which had failed to stand
| up (and much of which was bought out ahead of time).
|
| You also omit engagements like the Iraq war, where the fifth
| largest army in the world was taken out in a few weeks, with
| fewer than 150 US troops KIA. Someone I worked with who'd flown
| helicopters in-theater, told me in no uncertain terms that the
| main reason that the US didn't 'finish' and take Baghdad was
| that they didn't want the world's news to see the Iraqi carnage
| - literally hundreds of miles of nothing but burned out
| vehicles and bodies. Not exactly the US 'getting stomped'.
|
| For a current example, just look to Ukraine, where a relatively
| small force is decimating what was considered to be the 2nd-
| best military on the planet, using only 3rd-shelf inventory
| from other democracies. Every time the Russians get behind-the-
| scenes warned by the US, both on nuclear sabre-rattling and
| Biden's visit to Kyiv, they back down. Because they know that
| the half-life of their Mil in Ukr & Black Sea would be measured
| in double-digit minutes if the US Mil got involved.
|
| If China thought the way you did, and thought they could
| undermine the US or NATO, they'd have already given serious
| arms to Russia. They haven't even begun to do so.
|
| The principle here is that if a person or country wants to live
| a self-determined life with a self-determined government, they
| need to be better armed, prepared, and allied than any bully or
| adversary.
|
| The west thought for decades that appeasement would work, but
| Russia ended that era on 24-Feb-2022. The US mil is still the
| most lethal fighting force in history, and US and NATO are now
| rapidly ramping up. You want to challenge that head on? Good
| luck; you'll need it. Both Putin and Xi already know better.
| prmph wrote:
| This notion that the US is somehow weak because it has
| seemingly not won any wars since ww2 misses something:
|
| The US has historically been held back by internal unease over
| human right violations and the morality of the wars. Were the
| US to prosecute wars like how Russia does (for e.g., in
| Chechenya and Ukraine) the results would likely be devastating.
|
| The Taliban did not beat the US. The US realized it was a fools
| errand to try to democratize Afghanistan. The fool-proof way to
| "fix" Afghanistan would have been to level it, lay waste to it,
| making it virtually uninhabitable, but that was morally
| indefensible.
| hash872 wrote:
| Didn't the US win the First Gulf War? What else would you call
| that?
| pwinnski wrote:
| At the risk of becoming a guy who recommends a ten-hour
| podcast in answer to single questions, here's a ten-hour
| podcast to answer your single question:
| https://blowback.show/Season-1
|
| I would call it many things, but "a war we won" is not one of
| them, not at all.
| jessaustin wrote:
| If you win the war you get to go home. USA presence in the
| Arabian peninsula was cited by ObL as the reason for 9/11.
| Kuwait does export useful hydrocarbons, but much less than
| the Kingdom which could have increased production to make up
| for a temporary pause of Kuwait exports. The pause would have
| been temporary because Iraq would have restarted the export
| of Kuwaiti hydrocarbons as soon as possible. If anything,
| fighting a war disrupted the market more than not fighting it
| would have.
|
| A war that was fought for no reason, that didn't end before
| causing the most disastrous attack on USA soil since 1814, I
| would call "dumb".
| 123pie123 wrote:
| >If you win the war you get to go home
|
| so America lost WWII then by that logic, because they never
| went home?
| toss1 wrote:
| >>A war that was fought for no reason
|
| Serious ignorance, right there.
|
| The entire reason the war was fought was to enforce the
| principle that taking other sovereign territory by force is
| not acceptable.
|
| It is the same reason that we support Ukraine's fight for
| self-determination.
|
| You can always make excuses to allow bullies to win. As you
| pointed out, we didn't rescue Kuwait for their oil, which
| Iraq would have soon put back on the market. We -- the
| entire alliance of free-world nations -- did it, and are
| helping Ukraine, to support self-determination.
|
| Once the principle is established of allowing bullies and
| autocrats to take what they want, it will never end until
| they have everything.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Seems like a like of armchair general theory-crafting without
| much substance. Yeah, a $75,000 gravity bomb with some form of
| guidance to target ships is cheaper than a cruise missile, but a
| bomber capable of getting within range of a carrier group to drop
| such a bomb is far more expensive than the cruise missile.
|
| And it misses the single most important rule of war: weapons
| don't win wars, logistics does. See Russia's failed push on Kiev
| last year for an example of this, or Germany for the entire
| eastern front of WW2.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| ..and this is why the American war machine is so effective.
| Their logistics are absolutely amazing.
|
| You know who else is really really good at Logistics? China.
| ericmay wrote:
| > You know who else is really really good at Logistics?
| China.
|
| What do you base this on? And how does it translate to
| potential military engagements?
| klooney wrote:
| Also, they have a large and still functional industrial base.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| US industrial production is at or near all-time highs, no?
| gumby wrote:
| In dollar volume yes. In mass of materiel, or
| flexibility, less so.
| [deleted]
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The horniness for war machines on this site has just gotten too
| extreme in the last year. Y'all need to stop fantasizing about
| the killing machines for entertainment it's bad for your soul.
| seanw444 wrote:
| They're machines. People find machines and how they function
| interesting, regardless of their purpose.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yes and this is bad. Their purpose is part of what they are
| you shouldn't ignore it just because you think they're nifty.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Do you have a concept of self-defense? If we stop being
| interested in being one step ahead, we become slaves of
| another. That's how it goes, no matter how much "peace,
| love, and happiness" you try to manifest.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| What about self defense requires you to use the
| technological sophistication of war weapons as
| entertainment?
| seanw444 wrote:
| What? Military research has benefits outside of military
| use. V-2s became Saturn Vs on the way to the moon, which
| begat ICBMs. Haber-Bosch method gave us more fertilizer,
| but also more explosives. Lasers can be used for hair
| removal surgery, or as guidance systems for rockets.
| Explosives _themselves_ can be used for civil engineering
| purposes. The Me 262 was meant to be an agile fighter,
| but now we use its technology to haul millions of people
| a day across the world.
|
| Thinking about war technology as strictly evil and "must
| avoid" is honestly stupid.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| ok sean I think you've moved the goalposts pretty far now
| to be justified in calling me stupid. I surely am but
| only for participating in this experiment in paring away
| context until fighter jets become tools for human
| thriving.
|
| good work here I really think you should go watch some
| videos of them being used though especially the ones with
| children involved.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| one of my childhood fantasies was to create weapons that
| kill very effienctly
|
| once I had the opportunity to get a job in this field
| (electronics area) in my early 20's, I then questioned my
| morals and realised I didn't want to contribute to killing
| people
|
| many decades later, I'm not so moralistic - esp with the
| UKR / rus war
|
| but that ship has sailed
| criddell wrote:
| Viruses kill a lot of people. Is it bad to interested in
| viruses?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Is there a large scale multi-generation propaganda
| campaign to normalize the creation and deployment of
| lethal viruses on a global scale and to recruit people
| into their construction to that purpose? If so yes it's
| bad to be interested in viruses.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| most technical advances are a double edge sword
|
| there is no good or bad science
| samsolomon wrote:
| A year ago a war broke out in Europe--it's still happening.
| Worldwide that has caused an increased interest in war and
| technologies associated with it.
| freeopinion wrote:
| I'm often intrigued by the use of passive voice in language.
| This is a particularly interesting one to me. I don't mean
| this as a criticism of samsolomon. I just find language and
| its connection to thought and action interesting.
|
| A war did something, as if all by itself. That expression
| contains so much dangerous obfuscation, but also potential
| for insight. Russia attacked Ukraine, and in this way "a war
| broke out".
|
| In the parent comment, the details are not the point. The
| passive voice serves well to get to the point the author is
| trying to make. Yet at the same time it reinforces the point
| to which the author is responding. It glosses over the horror
| of the war so that we can get to the interesting parts.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| >Russia attacked Ukraine
|
| This is accurate, but it isn't the _war_ being fought and
| it is hardly the first volley.
|
| Ukraine is a mostly unwilling participant in a much larger
| game. If you choose a most peculiar and narrow view
| regarding the nature of this conflict, it seems somewhat
| obtuse to question another comments "voice"
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I didn't ask why I said it's bad.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Indeed. Two years ago an interest in tanks and artillery
| shells was about last on my list, almost a historical
| curiosity. But suddenly I've become _extremely_ interested,
| as it 's become one of the top geopolitical focus points of
| our time.
|
| But "horniness for war machines" is as far from the truth as
| you can get. It's really just an interest in what it takes to
| preserve democracy. We can go for decades of peace and forget
| that sometimes preserving democracy really does depend on
| tanks and bullets, when an autocrat decides to attack.
| l33tbro wrote:
| Preserving democracy?
|
| Ah yes, those fine captains of industry from the Military
| Industrial Complex. Deeply enmeshed in the fabric of
| Washington policy and always acting for the benefits of
| freedom and democracy.
|
| "A racket is best described, I believe, as something that
| is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a
| small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is
| conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense
| of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge
| fortunes." - Smedley Butler
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that even if you have
| no intention to fight a war, an aggressive neighbor may
| have other ideas, so you don't have a choice other than
| being ready for it, if you want to continue existing as
| an independent country.
|
| How you're ready for it can vary, but deterrence by
| having better weapons is one effective way. In the best
| case, it works and you don't have a war. And if it
| doesn't, you still have better weapons to end the war -
| and preferably keep it on the enemy's territory so the
| destruction happens there and not in your country.
|
| Right now, Ukraine has its cities leveled, while Russia
| is (with a few exceptions) "only" losing military gear
| and personnel.
| scatters wrote:
| The war _started_ in 2014, with the invasion of Crimea and
| the Dobnas. The 2022 invasion was an escalation.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| I'd argue that war machines are some of the most influential
| technology that will shape the world. They are very interesting
| to me.
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