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2008-07-09 Home Front: WoT

Roles, Missions, and Equipment: Military Lessons from Experience in this Decade

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Posted by Nimble Spemble 2008-07-09 11:02|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 "cannot be swayed by logic or argument"

Tell the Japanese. After the failure at Guadalcanal, their gains contracted. After the naval battles of the Philippines, their naval defense were decimated. When Okinawa as taken, their inner defense lines were breached. Their cities were literally burning to the ground around them. The Imperial Japanese Staff continued to follow an irrational path which included plans using human waves of civilians to try to delay the inevitable. It took two wake up calls to bring logic back to the process. Even then, desperate elements within the military attempted a coup to prevent a rational conclusion to the conflict. Dealing with the irrational is not new. It is only 'will' or lack there of that by application in a manner they understand will rational return to the equation. We spend a lot of time and effort to avoid applying will.

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-07-09 14:36|| 2008-07-09 14:36|| Front Page Top

#2 We Americans must use technology in warfare as a lever. We do not have the human assets, read fodder, for attacks, unlike the Chicoms, or the Jihadis. Even they will eventually feel the effects of attrition.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2008-07-09 15:03|| 2008-07-09 15:03|| Front Page Top

#3 We do not have the human assets, read fodder, for attacks, unlike the Chicoms, or the Jihadis.

One of the lessons learned by the Chinese in Korea is that they don't have enough fodder either.

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-07-09 17:37|| 2008-07-09 17:37|| Front Page Top

#4 We have made huge advances but we don't have the ability to take advantage of them in many cases. Many of our weapons are expensive to build and take a long lead time to produce. We can knock out a tank with a single missile but a country could produce more cheap tanks than we have missiles.

The way to defeat the US would be in quantity of targets. Our ammunition is so scarce and expensive that if you present more targets than we have high-tech missiles to hit them with, you win.

The worst scenario would be a mix of fully capable tanks along with others that are basically just a shell and a motor. Indistinguishable visually from the fully capable target, we would waste a lot of ammunition on targets of little military value.

The answer to that threat is the enhanced radiation warhead that simply kills all the tank crews but it would be hard politically to use such a weapon against a mosquito like Iran, for example.

Posted by crosspatch 2008-07-09 19:29|| 2008-07-09 19:29|| Front Page Top

#5 "Reaching the Tipping Point...off-the-shelf technologies" > methinks DESERT STORM better marked that Point. You can go back even earlier to Osama's war agz the Soviets + Putin in Afghanistan where ELDERLY REDEYE MISSLES STILL MANAGED TO SHOOT DOWN A LARGE NUMBER OF NEWER SOVIET = SOVIET EQUIPPED ARMED HELOS, or the early '80's ISRAELI AIR VICTORIES over Lebanon.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2008-07-09 19:36|| 2008-07-09 19:36|| Front Page Top

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