The next version of the Stugna software is going to have a “share to social media” button on the screen
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
Well he does have a point…September 11th, 2022 |
 8 comments to Well he does have a point… |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
There is a lot of argument now about whether modern infantry weapons make tanks and other armoured vehicles obsolete.
I would not say obsolete – but they do seem to be much vulnerable than when Mr Putin’s hero Joseph “Stalin” was in charge of first the Red Army and then (after 1946) the Soviet Army.
“Gotcha!” We’re all Sun readers now.
Paging Colonel Falkenberg. John Christian Falkenberg to the white courtesy telephone.
Posers always like to talk about how this or that will make something obsolete. Sometimes they are right–no one makes a MOLLE scabbard for a saber (not that I’ve really looked mind you) because the firearm changed the nature of infantry warfare enough that swords just aren’t useful. But it’s been less than a generation since the last bayonet charge (Brits in both cases…The US Marine Corps needs to get it’s shit together and Git Some, which is something the Spartan’s would have found understandable.
The chAir Force used to try to argue that Air Power(tm) made ground forces (with the exception of those needed to support the planes, and erm…protect them) obsolete.
That didn’t work in…well, anywhere.
So yeah, wouldn’t want to be a tanker on today’s battlefield for lots of reasons (being a tanker just sucks) but I’d bet my next paycheck that there’s a lot of research going in how to defeat those kinds of weapons so that the people who make tanks can change the government billions of dollars to make new ones.
I read the same arguments in all the usual places, but most of those miss the most germane point indicating tanks (as a concept) are not even obsolescent let alone obsolete.
Take the spectacular and still ongoing Ukrainian penetration and roll-up of the Russian Kharkiv-Izyum axis for example. This was a classic tank-lead combined arms operation (Russian sources I have seen described the initial breakthrough being let by “15-17 tanks”). And what makes it all the more striking is Ukraine is employing the same kind of tanks as Russia (and in many cases actual captured Russian ones), indicating the problem is not “tanks” per se, but rather how Russia vs. Ukraine uses them. Compare the successful but tepid Russian “Popsna breakthrough” in May with the avalanche of steel Ukraine just unleashed, resulting in the capture of strategic Kupyansk rail junction.
For reasons I will not try and address now, the Russian army seems to have lost the institutional knowledge of how to do combined arms operations. Ukraine on the other hand just gave the Russians a master class on how it’s done.
People seem to have missed where I typed “I would not say obsolete”.
Sometimes I indeed miss out the word “not” – but I did not miss out the word “not” on this occasion.
I am sometimes accused of making sentences too long – but if people do not read to the next sentence, then a sentence has to be long.
Why the hell would you unload from your troop carrier in the relative open when you already know enemy forces are in the area and shooting at what would be a sitting duck?
I hope my own country’s mech infantry units are taking notes.
No weapons are completely obsolete. Hit somebody properly with a stick or stone — or even a fist — and they’ll go down.
These days, it’s quite possible to bring down a plane or blow up a tank. But the weapons to do it are much more expensive than the weapons needed to bring down a foot soldier. There’s more than one way to make an enemy pay.
The Israelis lost a load of tanks in the 1973 ‘Yom Kippur’ war when they first encountered Sagger anti-tank guided weapons. As those were wire guided, the Israelis quickly learned to put a lot of firepower at the bloke aiming the missile and reduced its effectiveness. I imagine their Iron Beam will also be a bit of a game changer when armies start deploying it. See Wikipedia. Someone comes up with a good weapon and then somebody works out how to defeat it. History is replete of such examples like Knights in armour were the tanks of their day. Before Knights it was pikes and before them it was chariots.