tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3860779143124497482024-03-18T07:12:09.577+01:00Defence and FreedomThis is a blog about the defence of freedom and sovereignty both against internal as well as external threats.
It's written in English, but the author is a German.
Art of war, economics, technology and (military) history are the most important inspirations for this blog.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2429125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-88556084752372533322024-03-13T20:41:00.004+01:002024-03-13T20:41:53.266+01:00Mobilisation Part III: Personnel<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Major wars usually show the very same thing; insufficient (quantity) training of reserve leaders pre-war leads to too short training of leaders in wartime. Well-known examples include the American Civil War, First World War, Second World War and the current Russo-Ukrainian War. The result is amateurish military actions leading to avoidable casualties, failures in offence and failures in defence against skilful attacks.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">It takes as a (very rough) rule of thumb</span></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">three months for a decent basic training to turn a civilian into a soldier,</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">(I say) about three more months for a specialisation training (this can differ very much and many soldiers need no specialisation training),</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">about six months for a good a good junior non-commissioned officer course (graduation rate well below 100%),</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">some experience as leader and six months to turn a good junior non-commissioned officer into a senior non-commissioned officer or junior officer in yet another course (these two courses should both have graduation rates not much higher than 2/3).</span></li></ul><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">So to create a reserves-grade senior NCO (assistant platoon leader or kind of chief of staff of a company leader) or junior officer (platoon leader) takes about two years in peacetime conditions IF and only if the ambitions are kept modest. Historically, the U.S. Army produced "<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/90-day_wonder" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">90 day wonders</a>" junior officers during WW2, almost all of which predictably didn't shine. To create junior officers with section leader competence takes around a year in peacetime conditions.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Wartime training is more serious, more urgent, more streamlined, more motivated and rather devoid of vacations. It can thus be much quicker, but often times it's also less versatile. A tank commander trained during a desert war for desert warfare would not be taught about fighting in hilly terrain with woodland and swamps, for example. Furthermore, the duration of peacetime training courses may be inflated because the armed service is too bureaucratic, adding too much nonsense training, is lacking training resources (such as access to simulators or live shooting ranges) or lacking self-discipline in defining the course.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">- - - - - <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The armed bureaucracies, politicians and journalists have a suboptimal obsession with peacetime military strength. I don't care whether the current <i>Bundeswehr</i> personnel strength is 177k or 183k; tell me the mobilised strength, damnit! The last time I read that figure it was at 690k (according to my memory), and that was ages ago. Nowadays it's likely below 300k with almost no properly-equipped reserve combat formations.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">This focus on peacetime strength befits a military that doesn't fight with more than one finger - stuff like the farce in Afghanistan, for example. A military with a constitutional mission to defend the nation should be built for mobilised (wartime) strength instead.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">There are multiple metrics for that. We could look at strength on day 1, on day 4, on day 14 or strength after one year of warfare, for example. We could furthermore look at these dates once with the assumption of a surprise war and another time with the assumption that the war risk was recognised long in advance and there was a two-year buildup of military power.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><b>I'm in favour of paying attention to German military strength on day 14 of mobilisation, both with and without two-year reactionary buildup.<i> </i></b>The simple reason for this is that the geographic proximity of Germany to the NATO members under threat of invasion positions Germany naturally as a first weeks responder. The Spanish, British and North Americans could consider themselves as naturally inclined to bring most of their troops into action after (much) more than two weeks.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;">This leads to an emphasis on personnel and material reserves. Strength on day four would be about active forces strength, but strength on day 14 is about mobilised strength. The peacetime strength should thus be but a means to credibly create that day 14 strength (and to prepare for a two-year buildup).<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">We should also consider the "day 14 " strength after a two-year force buildup. <br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The enlisted personnel can be trained quickly (in about half a year as mentioned above), especially if you have enough leadership personnel to conduct the training.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">A two-year buildup would give just barely enough time for creating many satisfactory junior leaders. This would require a diversion of suitably qualified leaders from the active army to employment as trainers, which runs counter to the generals' and politicians' primitive desire to enlarge peacetime combat strength in times of crisis. Germany can downgrade its "day 1" and "day 4" strengths like this, but directly exposed countries of the alliance such as Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania would probably not dare to do so.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">So far I wrote about the generation of trained personnel. There's also the issue of wartime attrition, which matters a lot if the war is protracted. Regrettably, wars are notoriously difficult to end, so a protracted war should not be ruled out.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Land troops within about 30 km of hostile land forces suffer the highest rate of attrition, but it's not just the attrition by death or crippling that matters. Psychological attrition is just as bad, and remarkably predictable. Combat troops reach a zenith of combat effectiveness after les than 100 days of combat, but soon after 100 days of combat they become near-useless. The failures of particularly proven veteran troops in battle are legion in military history. Napoleon's Old Guard failed at Waterloo, British desert soldiers with experience since 1940/41 often failed to attack successfully in Tunisia and Italy in '43. Experienced German infantry (and officers!) failed towards the ends of both world wars.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Rotation of troops should be self-evident, but even with a lavish rotation scheme and a defensive strategy you'll need a 100% turnover of personnel in combat troops within a year if you want to avoid a collapse of combat effectiveness for psychological reasons. I suppose we should at very least be prepared for one such full water change in the combat arms and generally all troops meant for within 20 km distance to hostile ground forces. This creates a justified but uncommonly high expectation for personnel reserve creation during peacetime.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">There's also the issue that combat troops junior leaders can be expected to suffer higher attrition rates than enlisted combat troops, at least if they lead in the German way.<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">This is all without taking into account the creation of additional formations, as it always happens in large wars (ACW, WWI, WW2, Iraq-Iran War, Russo-Ukrainian War examples). The creation of new formations always dilutes the quality of the overall armed forces and was often driven well past the optimum. All-too often the creation of additional formation was pushed for at the expense of fully reconstituting depleted existing formations that have a proven and working skeleton cadre left.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And then there's the issue of middle-level leadership. I have a low opinion of how much senior (above brigade command) leadership (or rather management) we would need at war, so middle-level is much more interesting. Company leaders (captains / <i>Hauptmann</i>) should have at least some platoon leadership experience as officers, so a total time in service of about 30 months is a reasonable minimum for them. The exceptions are very easy jobs (such as being leader of a clothing depot or a railway repair unit) and very tricky jobs (example company leadership in electronic warfare or armoured reconnaissance) and jobs that are very similar to civilian jobs (medical, road logistics).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The training of a large quantity of junior leaders and larger quantity of reserve enlisted men has the nice side effect that you need company leaders and battalion commanders for this, of course. So that training program gives experience-gathering opportunities for mid-level leadership personnel.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">It's often said that it's the personnel that matters most. People should pay more attention to the fact that it's the WARTIME personnel that matters most, NOT the peacetime personnel. War after war military historians recorded the same issue that certain jobs in an army require long training and experience, but had to be done by quickly trained and not very experienced men. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>We need guns and munitions and vehicles and electronics, but we also need to be credible regarding personnel. Even deep munitions stocks and thousands of reserve combat vehicles would not be of much value if we lack the personnel to make good use of them. The long-serving peacetime army concept cannot provide the required quantity of junior leaders. We should have many volunteers serving for six to 36 months. That would enable a powerful mobilisation (though not without equipment stocks) and it would be a fine basis for a roughly two-year race of training & producing to counter an aggressive power's race to become ready for successful aggression.</i><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
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S O</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a></span><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-63846893250712257202024-03-11T14:31:00.001+01:002024-03-11T14:35:02.642+01:00A Ukrainian merchant raider<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
Warships are peculiar; you do not need to commission them in a port. Prize ships were commissioned as warships at sea during both World Wars.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">This means that the Ukraine could take possession of a merchant ship (ideally a small container ship), load and equip it at sea, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_commissioning" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">commission it</a> as a Ukrainian warship and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_raiding" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">start raiding Russian maritime trade</a> in the Mediterranean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean and maybe even the Pacific Ocean.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Sms_wolf_wachtfels.jpg?20140511230416" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="441" data-original-width="750" height="188" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Sms_wolf_wachtfels.jpg?20140511230416" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">German WW1 merchant raider "Wolf"
<br />(first raider with aircraft onboard, 451 days patrol)</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Some additional fuel tanks, some containers and a helicopter for a boarding team of at least four (two for bridge and two for placing demolition charges with anti-tampering devices) would suffice. Most light turbine-powered helicopters (including almost all civilian ones) would be satisfactory. The helicopter would enable the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_raider" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">merchant raider</a> to be 30...100 nm away from the action and thus quite safe. Ships could also successfully be engaged with unguided rockets (bigger than 80 mm calibre) if and once counter-boarding measures are applied.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Things such as fancy sensors for the helicopter or a radio jammer would be unnecessary. The 'military' equipment could consist of civilian pistols and carbines and rather simple demolitions equipment (linear shaped charges would be extremely effective). The costs could be quite marginal if an old ship was used.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">One could equip such a merchant raider much more lavishly, including recoverable high performance drones, multiple helicopters capable of dropping depth charges (torpedo-like effect of sinking a ship) with doorgunners and the like. There's no used one on the market, but imagine the propaganda value of using a black-silver Bell 222 as boarding helicopter.</span> <br /></p><p> </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The West would not even be implicated by providing the ship, providing weapons, providing non-public maritime intelligence. It wouldn't even need to resupply the merchant raider, which could easily begin the patrol with a year's worth of food and could occasionally siphon fuel from a prize ship before sinking it. Theoretically, Ukraine would even be legally able to keep prize ships as bounties and sell them off for profit (which is much more environmentally friendly than sinking, especially with oil tankers). It might also occasionally keep a prize ship to create yet another merchant raider. New crew members could be taken in just outside territorial waters (3 nm off the coast) using cheap boats.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I am not 100% sure, but it might even be possible in international law for Ukraine to issue <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">letters of marque</a> to privateers, but I suppose few people would risk a reservation on the GRU's assassination list by becoming anti-Russia privateers. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The decrepit Russian navy and satellite fleet would have great difficulty to find, track and engage such merchant raiders if they stay far-enough away from Russian coasts and if Russia doesn't receive substantial intelligence aid by the Chinese. They would likely eventually catch a raider or two, but that would not mitigate the damage done much.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>The difficulties that Russia would have with such Ukrainian merchant raiders would create a giant embarrassment in addition to the economic damage. </i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">related:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2015/09/naval-commerce-raiding-today.html">/2015/09/naval-commerce-raiding-today.html</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2021/12/future-naval-commerce-raiding.html">/2021/12/future-naval-commerce-raiding.html</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
S O<br />
</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-23395480634088223732024-03-04T15:49:00.003+01:002024-03-04T15:50:12.758+01:00Mobilisation Part II: "Escalatory"<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br />
"<b><i>Escalatory</i></b>"</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">This word has been used a lot recently, typically by people who oppose aiding Ukraine to defend itself against the Russian aggression.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The fear of escalation guides the thoroughly idiotic American National Security advisor, for example. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">To appease or to paralyse out of fear in face of aggressors is a path of failure: It prevents downsides to the aggressor, who can attack and steal from the weak without costs exceeding the (perceived) benefits. The costs of economic sanctions are near-irrelevant to an aggressive leader who thinks in centuries-spanning nationalistic-imperialist mission or who believes in some messianic world revolution. Economic sanctions reduce the capabilities of an aggressor, but rather not his/her aggressive intent. To deter aggression requires the risk of catastrophic defeat of the aggressor and to stop aggressions requires a war effort (backed by provision or production of military goods; conversion to war economy if it's a major war).<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Fear of escalation paralyses counteraction against aggressors. It may (and will) get in the way of countering a build-up of military power out of fears that 'arms racing' is escalatory.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Thus we need to master the political dimension for a successful counter to preparation or execution of an aggression. Any plan to counteract aggressors with a defensive military build-up needs to address the political dimension decisively.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The most important part of a mobilisation plan may thus be to wrestle the narrative control away from the "non-escalatory" and "appeasement" idiots, preferably years in advance of the activation of the mobilisation.</b></span></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Politicians are ill-suited to do this, for they have proved to be utterly disinterested in defence when there's no immediate need for military action. People who think of four- or five-year cycles are ill-suited to maintain a narrative (even embed it in culture) over decades unless the entire country is aware of the necessity (Israel, South Korea, Finland).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><b><i>We need non-politician agents to create and maintain the narrative on how to react to a likely aggressor's military strength (build-up). This narrative needs to be pro deterrence, contra appeasement and contra fearful pussies.</i><br /></b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Back to how to execute this; the narrative (if not the national culture) should be a narrative of vigilance as well as proudly and self-confidently standing fast against aggressors. This is needed both while aggressors prepare their aggression and if that fails, when they execute their aggression. <b><i>The narrative should be that harm stems from failure to stop aggressors</i></b>, not from calling their (usually nuclear) bluff. The weakness of an aggressive regime (loyalty issues, economic weaknesses, dearth of potent allies) should be emphasised rather than the aggressive regime's self-image of strength, manliness and success. The framing of public discussions is important. Incentives and disincentives are important; nobody should benefit from being a saboteur of national resolve to stand fast against aggressors. Those who do it should be sanctioned by the society - the need to do this needs to be part of the culture. Nobody should be rewarded for a primitive "I'm pro-peace" stance if the price for peace is that a country has to submit to an aggressor.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
S O</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">P.S.: F</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">or clarification: We should treat <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2008/09/overly-aggressive-allies.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">any aggression committed by U.S., UK, France,</a>
Israel just as harshly as aggressions committed by Russia or China. The casual and
habitual violations of article 1 North Atlantic Treaty by the U.S. should not be
tolerated!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-76273689519710059942024-03-02T12:17:00.005+01:002024-03-04T15:52:26.747+01:00Mobilisation Part I: The need to counter arms buildups<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
The French were keen to reconquer Alsace-Lothringia after 1871. They conscripted to the maximum (about 75% of young men were deemed fit and pressed into service), trained many officers, introduced the revolutionary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_de_75_mod%C3%A8le_1897" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Soixante-Quinze</a> field gun and produced it in the thousands before WWI. Germany enjoyed a larger population base and kept the peace with a less extreme conscription (a bit over 50%). The defensive outlook of Germany in 1871-1913 was based on the consensus that German borders were satisfactory with no need for expansion. The alliance situation did put the gargantuan Russian army on the side of Germany's opposition, though. The German armies repeatedly called for additional funding for additional army corps, but the parliament (of the then supposedly oh-so militaristic German nation) refused such expansions for many years about two years before WW1. Eventually, Germany was short of a couple army corps in 1914 to win in France and the First World War became not only unnecessarily bloody, but also a disaster that cracked (amongst others) the German society. The ability to expand the armed forces more rapidly before WWI would have helped much; it would have kept costs (and loss of productivity) low during the many peaceful decades that preceded the First World War in Central Europe and it would have delivered that critical extra punch when the war happened.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The run-up to the Second World War was longer. Italy's Fascist government was considered a prime threat to peace in Europe around 1930, but the Soviet Union was at that time already much-increasing its arms production output based on new factories, some of which were built with American help. Germany turned Fascist in early 1933 and began a rearmament program based on a 100,000 troops army of men who were almost all qualified for immediate promotion (plus a small navy) and reintroduced conscription in 1935. Hostilities began around 1936-1938 with the Italian aggressions against Albania, Abbessinia (Ethiopia), the Japanese attack on China and German occupation of today's Czech Republic. The Second World War officially broke out in late 1939 and by end of 1941 the world was on fire for real. Again, several countries would have fared better if they had better prepared for a rapid expansion of their armed forces, especially their army. They had about two to twelve years time for this expansion, depending on country and political situation.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">These are two examples of very high stakes conflicts with a prior period of a few years in which countries needed to prepare for (defensive) war in face of preparations for war by aggressive powers. Maybe such an ability would even have deterred the historical aggressor?<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">This series of blog posts will cover the scenario of a peaceful country (or alliance) reacting to aggressive intent and the potential aggressors' military build-up.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
S O<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-25037103148276663872024-02-06T20:38:00.005+01:002024-03-03T11:28:12.149+01:00"Evolving" transitory tech: FPV drones & electronic warfare<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
Back in the 1930's the Nazi government of Germany sent troops and vehicles to assist Franco's Nationalist-Fascist coup (later civil war) effort in Spain.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The only tanks available for employment (testing) in Spain were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_I" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pzkpfw I</a>, bulletproof tankettes with two normal calibre machineguns. They did of course encounter bulletproofed vehicles of Soviet manufacture and even their steel core bullets proved to be useless against those. Germany got ahead of that problem by using 20 mm autocannons in the successor and later 37 mm cannons (and 75 mm stub guns) in the last pre-WW2 tank models.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The tech that was employed in Spain was hinting at the future, but it wasn't the future. Most of it was outdated two years later already. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><b>I suppose the "This is the future of war!" claims based on what's happening in Ukraine will prove to be just as durable.</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Let's look at a most striking example; the FPV (first person view) remote-controlled kamikaze quadcopter with a 1980's shaped charge that's a terrible threat to almost any tank in existence <u>today</u>. These proved to be more practical than <a href="https://www.nammo.com/story/drone-mounted-m72-shows-promising-results/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nammo's experiment with a multicopter that has a downwards-firing bazooka</a>. For all I know (unconfirmed info) the rule of thumb is that you need ten of these for one hit, and in regard to anti-tank warfare they are very often employed against already immobilised or even abandoned tanks. Success story videos on Youtube have a "<a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/survivorship-bias" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">survivor bias</a>".</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://topwar.ru/uploads/posts/2023-12/1702898408_fpv1.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="425" data-original-width="800" height="170" src="https://topwar.ru/uploads/posts/2023-12/1702898408_fpv1.webp" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">These remote-controlled drones need a radio line of sight to transmit the steering commands and much more bandwidth to transmit a video feed from the drone to the operator. The onboard radio is tiny and weak and has no directional antenna. An airborne larger drone could jam this signal easily, but the ground forces under attack lacked a line of sight to the operator's radio and were thus hardly able to jam the video feed.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">You can observe that the video feed of such kamikaze drone attacks often interrupts briefly before impact. All early such videos had this degradation and eventual loss of the video feed (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe5RvttOs-E" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">example</a>).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">At that time the self-defending ground forces were able to employ a jammer to jam the steering command transmissions, for the attacking drone was in the defender's field of view. Two approaches were used; directional jamming with a directional antenna (<a href="http://jamkor.co.kr/anti-drone/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">examples</a>) and semi-spherical/omnidirectional jamming (<a href="https://www.unmannedairspace.info/counter-uas-systems-and-policies/russia-deploys-tank-mounted-volnorez-jammers-in-ukraine/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">example</a>). The latter was usually automated, while the former usually took the shape of a jamming 'rifle' pointed at the drone. The directional approach transmits more energy into the drone's antenna, which allows for a longer range (or weaker emitter). The omnidirectional approach did not require knowledge about the drone's whereabouts; a detection of the video feed signal would trigger a jamming of the steering commands datalink.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The jammed frequencies were often the typical frequencies used by commercial DJI drones; 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz. Some jammers were only built to jam the older 2.4 GHz range (jamming up to 3 GHz) and were useless against 5.8 GHz signals, leading some people to conclude that the self-protection jammers seen on tanks a second before impact of the kamikaze drone were useless. Predictably, there was and is a race of measures and countermeasures in Ukraine; different frequencies are now used (2.4 and 5.8 GHz are widely considered useless by now due to the jamming), often as modification of commercial drones by tinkerers.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The attackers attempted to solve the connection loss issue by using high vantage points or a radio repeater on a bigger drone. Nowadays many attack videos don't show the typical degradation and loss of the video feed any more.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The defending ground force have a line of sight to the repeater as well, so jamming the video feed (downlink) rather than mostly the steering signal (uplink) is feasible if an airborne repeater is used that has the attack target in line of sight. In fact, the defenders might triangulate the repeater (or detect it by radar) and jam it directly (with directional antenna and strong jammer) in an area defence effort rather than to rely on a short range omnidirectional self-protection jammers on vehicles, at trenches or in backpacks.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The self-protection jammers can be valuable, of course. A self-protection jammer can jam the drone if it's ahead of it in the measures-countermeasures race. The defenders' problem is that this doesn't necessarily help. A drone can be independent of its radio link entirely in the final attack phase; it can be "locked-on" the target at a safe distance (safe from omnidirectional self-protection jammers) and then execute its terminal approach to hit. this is 1970's technology, already seen in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBRoKgWLYl0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">AGM-65A "Maverick" missile</a>. It's not much of a challenge for an average young electrical engineer or a programmer, as the pattern recognition algorithms are easily available. You just need a bit more computing power in the drone than for normal flying and you need to crack DJI's proprietary steering software if you want to use DJI drones.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Maybe the radio jamming efforts will escalate to the point that all drones above treetop altitude will be detected and submitted to strong directional RF jamming efforts. Maybe the entire battlefield will be jammed broadband by so many cheap & small emitters that you cannot triangulate and kill them by artillery.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">That will still not protect from drones, as aforementioned pattern recognition tech long since advanced to the point that drones could find, identify, decide to attack and attack ground targets on their own, without any radio link. And maybe they even do so from multiple directions, with a couple of linked drones splitting up after 'locking on' themselves. Or they communicate by means that would not be jammed as long as they fly in a very close formation (acoustic, by light or by radio frequencies with very high atmospheric attenuation).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Maybe you think a typical hard kill active protection system for tanks would protect against drones? It might, but such systems could easily be saturated by an attack of more than six drones within few seconds and they usually only intercept the incoming munition at a few metres distance. Hard kill APS were designed with anti-tank guided missiles and RPGs in mind. <a href="https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/gec-marconi-dynamics-tams.29157/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">An anti-ATGM solution from the 1980's combined a radar with machineguns to shoot down the missile</a>. Almost all other systems are meant to be able to stop a RPG shot at very short distances, and thus their intercept of the munition is at very short distances.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg97108qL_9b5Zc4gNe3NfaLFr-oi1yT3Bh9L-wJkmNpTTrGNAeg9u7oA1ftKHytnD2eoopXQA50DKrOXkZjs752q7j8PtAoX2QQIrQNJCCQg4cbLhhNtOSv-5dI9uKl_Eig-2NNCN38JCZaIqsy34SKPyKVTc7-Ym5ZrPuuDH6GFOvz1tKl5ZJER7uWSOY/s554/sadarm-fire.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="554" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg97108qL_9b5Zc4gNe3NfaLFr-oi1yT3Bh9L-wJkmNpTTrGNAeg9u7oA1ftKHytnD2eoopXQA50DKrOXkZjs752q7j8PtAoX2QQIrQNJCCQg4cbLhhNtOSv-5dI9uKl_Eig-2NNCN38JCZaIqsy34SKPyKVTc7-Ym5ZrPuuDH6GFOvz1tKl5ZJER7uWSOY/s320/sadarm-fire.jpg" width="231" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">That's a problem, for an airborne drone does not need to come close to hit, penetrate and potentially destroy a tank. The evidence for this is the smart artillery munition that fires with EFP warheads at tanks. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9SpoIvLF7g" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">You can easily see the distance involved</a>.</span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">A drone could calculate a distance estimation based on how quickly the target becomes bigger in the vide (knowing the own speed by inertial sensor) and fuse a EFP for lethal effect from a safe distance without any potentially jammable rangefinding procedure.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">So what next? Dazzle the drone with laser? It might not even use an optical sensor. Maybe burn or perforate the drone with a laser or gun?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I wrote about <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2008/01/screamers.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">autonomous attack drones years ago</a> (of course no original thought of mine). I wrote about the <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2017/08/very-low-level-air-defence-against.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">remotely controlled weapon station for anti-drone defence</a> (with possibly a little utility against ATGMs as well) years ago. I also wrote about the <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/active-protection-suites-for-afv-state.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">hard kill APS</a> with RPG and ATGM in mind years ago. These two hard kill defences were very obvious choices to me, but are just barely in existence outside of Israel.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>All that electronic warfare with jamming and radio wizardry to counter jamming are extremely important right now, but they are not the "future of land warfare". There will be jamming, but you will need hard kill defences. The electronic warfare defences of Ukraine 2022 and 2023 will look like a T-26's merely bulletproof armour in 1941; of little use, and definitely <u>not</u> the future.<br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
S O<br />
</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-30845979616052058462024-01-28T21:04:00.005+01:002024-01-28T21:04:52.330+01:00Do the British carriers make sense?<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br />
The article</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">"Floating mausoleums to political vanity: Our two new aircraft carriers cost almost £8 billion to build but, with the Middle East on fire, they're languishing in Portsmouth. We'd be better off selling them, says DAVID PATRIKARAKOS"</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13011743/aircraft-carriers-8-billion-middle-east-portsmouth.html">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13011743/aircraft-carriers-8-billion-middle-east-portsmouth.html</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">creates a bit of a stir.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Some online responses claim that it's error-ridden while agreeing somewhat. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I would certainly have edited the part about the missile threat to carriers; the anti-ship cruise missile threat appears to be in check IF the attacked ship or a well-positioned escort is on alert. The old and neglected Moskva probably didn't even have effective combat systems and no proper damage control preparations when it was struck by two missiles.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I would point at the "ballistic" anti-ship missile threat instead; the British carriers (and the American ones!) may be kept out of the range of Houthi ballistic anti-ship missiles because they pose too much of a risk. The British escorts are likely less well-equipped to deal with that threat than the American ones, at least that's what I read from the success of American-made SAMs against ballistic missiles and <a href="https://www.edrmagazine.eu/the-new-generation-munition" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the development of a new generation of Aster missiles (the British escorts' SAM) to improve anti-ballistic missile ability</a>.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/08/cost-of-carrier-aviation.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I picked the British carriers as examples for the cost of carrier aviation relative to land-based airpower about 15 years ago</a>. The high costs were never a secret or news.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Nor was the issue of the British not really buying enough F-35 for two carriers to make sense any insider knowledge:</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t0jgZKV4N_A?si=IQq48XZJM088kICs" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe>
<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">There's not really much new about the naval vs. land-based aviation argument.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The American carriers are instruments for land attack against countries that cannot effectively defend themselves against it, and it's been that way since late 1943. Most other carriers showed marginal utility since then.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Land-based aviation has come such a way that bombing Afghanistan from Diego Suarez and Kuwait was more practical than bombing over Afghanistan using carrier-based aircraft. Midair refuelling is the key, and navies try to ignore it because midair-refueling using converted (plentiful) airliners extends the airpower-dominated maritime areas so much that surface fleets make very little sense in a peer war. They need to be either awfully far away from hostile land or enjoy land-based assistance by fighters (which usually means that the carrier isn't needed as a base in the scenario).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Personally, I think that <a href="https://www.navylookout.com/crowsnest-airborne-surveillance-and-control-due-to-achieve-initial-operating-capability-in-2023/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CROWSNEST</a> (having an airborne early warning helicopter) was the brightest part of the British carrier investment effort of the past 20 years (albeit it's apparently technically not terribly great). Rotary AEW assets coupled with <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/04/sams-with-active-radar-homing.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">lock-on after launch surface to air missiles</a> can substitute for carrier fighters in the defensive role, and likely cope much better with surprise saturation attacks than carrier fighters could. Admirals would prefer to have the fighters as additional defence layer (and their radars as additional sensors), but admirals are not known for being good at allocation of scarce resources (budget) for very good reasons.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">A small carrier with affordable combat aircraft (Harrier II with APG-83 and modern air-to-air missiles) might nevertheless make much sense in some scenarios, but only so if ambition and costs are kept small. A few such 15,000 tons carriers with enough aircraft for three on station and three on 5-minute readiness as interceptors could make quite a difference as escort carrier between Japan and Hawaii. The Americans have no need for these, as they could improvise with land-based AEW and their amphibious carriers, of course.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">So what's a single French carrier good for? Launching a few airborne missiles throughout four decades of service? That could be substituted for by a chartered small cargo ship and some containerised cruise missiles.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">What are two British carriers with effectively one air wing good for? The British delude themselves into thinking they can do American-style land attack in every year (the French cannot when their carrier is in the shipyard for maintenance). That's it. Again, buying some standard (not capsuled for submarine use) surface-launched cruise missiles to be launched from some otherwise non-combat ships (volume and deck area on frigates and destroyers is too scarce) would yield about the same land attack capability, especially paired with midair-refuelled land-based combat aircraft being in range (within thousands of kilometres and if necessary overflight rights).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Other (online) commentary I saw recently called for a British focus on the naval realm, at the expense of the land forces. But what could be achieved in the naval realm? Russia has a crap navy and China has a navy on the far side of the globe that could very largely be neutralised by land-based aviation. So what's to be gained by adding a couple more British warships? Prettier naval parades for more tourism? Navy enthusiasts being happy? (<a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2015/08/flottenverein.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Navy enthusiasts</a> always want more, though. They're never happy!)<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Here are musings about what could/should have been done for security in Europe instead, spending-wise:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2016/12/what-europeans-could-do-for-more.html">/2016/12/what-europeans-could-do-for-more.html<br /></a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">That would have been much less "sexy" than aircraft carriers that could fit tennis courts inside.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">related:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2010/03/naval-procurement.html">/2010/03/naval-procurement.html</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2010/09/almost-unique-british-defence.html">/2010/09/almost-unique-british-defence.html</a> <br /></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2013/03/rebuttal-to-mcgrathid-about-carrier.html">/2013/03/rebuttal-to-mcgrathid-about-carrier.html</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2016/12/musings-about-naval-power-in-european.html">/2016/12/musings-about-naval-power-in-european.html</a></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2018/04/a-deconstruction-of-micc-propaganda.html">/2018/04/a-deconstruction-of-micc-propaganda.html</a> <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2023/04/chinas-naval-geography-problem-and-usn.html">/2023/04/chinas-naval-geography-problem-and-usn.html</a> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
S O<br />
</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-33522559999404084702024-01-27T00:06:00.002+01:002024-01-30T12:15:22.290+01:00The victim card was played too brazenly<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br />
It appears that playing the victim card to get a carte blanche to commit offences yourself doesn't work so well for Israel any more. They're so much used to it that they don't seem to be able to follow a different approach, though.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The death toll of the October 7th attacks by Hamas appears to be roughly 1/3 combatants (I'm not sure whether this includes deaths among those who were taken prisoner by Hamas fighters and other Gaza Strip inhabitants).</span></p><p><a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social-security-data-reveals-true-picture-of-oct-7-deaths"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social-security-data-reveals-true-picture-of-oct-7-deaths</span></a></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">This compares very unfavourably (for Israel) to the ratio of civilian to non-combatant deaths in Gaza Strip by the counteroffensive.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fight-keep-counting-dead-gaza-2023-12-21/">https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fight-keep-counting-dead-gaza-2023-12-21/<br /></a></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Moreover, Israel keeps producing evidence that its armed forces are intentionally destroying the real estate in Gaza Strip, including all universities.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1226534897/israel-has-destroyed-hundreds-of-educational-institutions-in-gaza-since-the-war">https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1226534897/israel-has-destroyed-hundreds-of-educational-institutions-in-gaza-since-the-war</a> </span><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The demolitions were actual demolitions, by a long shot not all damage done during combat. Many already swept buildings were destroyed by demolition charges, which is hardly ever justifiable.</span></p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yuECGW80TGA" width="320" youtube-src-id="yuECGW80TGA"></iframe></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The conflict in the levante is a conflict of counterviolence to counterviolence. Any claim that a particular action is a response to an original aggression is laughable. The people who started the conflict were already disposed of by biology. There's little point in trying to figure out who is more at guilt than the other in such a cycle of counterviolence. Words don't matter much, either - actions matter. Israel is killing way more civilians, and has been doing so for decades already. It couldn't have come this far without playing the victim card so effectively for so long, and it won't get much farther if that doesn't work any more.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Israel should stop being drunk on its perceived power and mind the fate of the crusader states: They didn't collapse because the Arabs beat them in battle; they dwindled away when the overseas allies lost interest in supporting them. Their overseas allies lost interest in supporting them because they lost confidence in that crusades were a worthy cause.</i></span><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
S O<br />
</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-68157313566739106342024-01-20T08:00:00.001+01:002024-01-20T08:00:00.136+01:00A Personal Defence Weapon<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Personal Defence Weapons (PDWs)</b> are weapons meant for soldiers who do not have shooting at the enemy with small arms as an important part of their job description. Support troops, tank crews, helicopter pilots and even infantry platoon leaders qualify.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Early examples of de facto <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_defense_weapon" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">PDWs</a> were the revolvers or pistols used by officers and the relatively weak <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_carbine" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">M1 "carbines"</a> of the U.S. Army in WW2.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Germany used UZI submachineguns for that purpose during the Cold War and introduced the dedicated PDW "MP7" with its tiny bullet since. The pistols in use with the <i>Bundeswehr </i>are not really de facto PDWs; their primary utility is in being guns with ball cartridges for escorting men outside of barracks who carry war small arms with useless blank cartridges. This way nobody shoots a gun with deadly munition while thinking it's loaded with blanks and there's still protection against people with pitchforks overwhelming and robbing an entire infantry platoon on a foot march.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;">PDWs are not really meant to be used against hostile troops even in wartime. They would only be used to shoot in anger under extreme circumstances. Most likely, the user would stand no chance due to morale, (lacking) combat training, lacking night vision and/or circumstances anyway.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">PDWs do serve purposes, though. They make the user feel armed (and thus respected as a soldier) and they may be used to control prisoners of war or to scare away civilians who interfere with military operations.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">PDWs do thus not need to be very powerful or high end. NATO was famously looking for PDWs that can penetrate a certain bulletproof vest concept (titanium plate + aramid layers) at a useful distance. this ruled out submachine and probably served no other purpose.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The cheapest way to create a PDW would be to build some super-cheap submachinegun such as a modern Sterling submachinegun. It would fail to be perceived as a respectable military weapon nowadays, though - and thus fail the morale job of the PDW.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In practice you could use just about any assault rifle or battle rifle (G3, FAL) to equip non-infantry and non-dismounted scout troops, but those would be quite cumbersome practically all the time they are carried. Thus they would not be carried for almost all the time.<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">I pondered about the concept of a PDW long before I started this blog in 2007, and just in case I ever need a blog post and can't come up with any decent topic I'll write down my currently favoured concept for a PDW (unless the armed forces have enough old assault rifles / carbines in their stocks):</p><p><br /></p><p>It shall be</p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>lightweight</li><li>cheap</li><li>not cumbersome</li><li>respectable</li><li>with good ergonomics</li><li>fully sable in all seasons <br /></li><li>built for their users (who don't get much small arms training)<br /></li></ol><p><br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>5.56x45, 5.45x39 or 5.8x42 mm calibre (depending on standard calibre in use with the armed force)</li><ul><li>reason: lightweight cartridge, small recoil, penetrated soft body armour, flat trajectory makes aiming relatively easy out to 200 m at least<br /></li></ul><li>chrome-lined barrel of about 28 cm (about 11") length<br /></li><ul><li>reason: That's long enough for the purpose with 5.56x45 mm at least, especially with a high pressure cartridge such as EPR</li><li>chrome lining more to preserve the weapon during 50+ years of use than to enable more shots fired</li></ul><li>barrel should be of lightweight construction ("pencil" barrel, outer diameter ~ 16 mm (0.625") and does not need to be armourer-level exchangeable</li><ul><li>few practice shots per year on average, as most PDWs would be stored for mobilization, not be in use by active duty troops<br /></li></ul><li>assumed munition loadout: 20 rounds in loaded magazine (wartime only), twice 30 rounds in pouches, maybe another 20 rounds in stripper clips in a pouch</li><ul><li>infantrymen would carry much more munitions, support personnel would certainly not carry more on the body most of the time! <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2014/10/stripper-clips-and-infantrymans-load.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Cartridges in stripper clips are a very lightweight reserve</a> just in case the more readily usable cartridges in magazines were spent very quickly.</li><li>20 rds magazine loaded becuase this protrudes less than 30 rds magazine; less bulky<br /></li></ul><li>an effective (but preferably short) flash hider</li><ul><li>the shortness of the barrel makes the muzzle flash worse, so a basic flash hider such as A2 is unsatisfactory <br /></li></ul><li>handguard around the barrel with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-LOK" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">M-LOK</a> interface on top and bottom<br /></li><ul><li>just in case upgrades (or iron sights) are later deemed advisable, more lightweight than NATO rails<br /></li></ul><li>forward hand grip in front of magazine well</li><ul><li>improving ergonomics of shooting at marginal additional weight</li><li>least protruding solution</li><li><a href="https://johnpierceesq.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/MWG_full-300x258.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">example picture</a>; shaping should be integral with magazine well rather than an aftermarket solution, of course <br /></li></ul><li>short stroke gas operated system</li><ul><li>no direct impingement to reduce need for cleaning, quite lightweight<br /></li></ul><li>closed bolt operation</li><ul><li>necessary for sufficiently small dispersion out to respectable 200 m <br /></li></ul><li>bolt catch; bolt remains in sprung position after last cartridge</li><ul><li>so the user immediately notices when the magazine is empty <br /></li><li>so the user doesn't need to repeat manually after changing the magazine<br /></li></ul><li>larger tolerances than with infantry & scout assault rifles</li><ul><li>for reliability when dirty and lower costs, leading to a MOA (dispersion) of 2 or 2.5 (2.5 for air force and navy personnel other than guards)</li><li>this should also reduce production costs<br /></li></ul><li>suitable design and oil for reliable operation at <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2013/10/east-european-military-technology.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">-30°</a>...+50°C operation at any humidity and the use of manually repeating weapon should be possible down to -40°C </li><ul><li> four seasons lubricant and four seasons cleaning oil</li></ul><li>no touching of metal parts necessary for combat use</li><ul><li>in case it's freezing cold and the user has no or only thin gloves<br /></li></ul><li>good (nowadays ordinary) ease & quickness of assembly, cleaning and disassembly</li><ul><li>better odds of good-enough care even if the NCOs fail to enforce it <br /></li></ul><li>for aiming just a cheap AAA battery-powered red dot sight on a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Accessory_Rail" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">NATO rail</a>, flip switch for on/off (explanation later)</li><ul><li>red dot sight because this requires the least training and is the easiest to use under stress, a really cheap one suffices <br /></li><li>red dot suffices for effective range of 200 m due to flat bullet trajectory with this cartridge & barrel combination</li><li>AAA instead of AA battery for less weight and bulk</li></ul><li>red dot size 2.5 MOA</li><ul><li>suitable for 200 m</li><li>large and thus easy enough to see for close fights <br /></li><li>2.5 MOA happens to be close to the dispersion MOA value of the gun</li></ul><li>sight line protected against smoke from hot barrel and possibly evaporating weapon oil<br /></li><li>trigger group with fire select trigger (single shot and either burst or full auto, depending on the armed service's preference - I would go for a 3...5 rds burst)</li><ul><li>mostly meant to make it easier for already terribly stressed users in close combat defence situation<br /></li></ul><li>safety lever and all other interfaces in ambidextrous design</li><ul><li>ergonomics for right handers and left handers</li><li>this includes symmetrical grip shapes <br /></li></ul><li>ejection of spent cases can be changed between left and right by unit armourer, ideally without requiring spare parts</li><ul><li>ergonomics for right handers and left handers</li></ul><li>comfortable resting location for the index finger to promote safe behaviour (again ambidextrous)<br /></li><li>all interfaces and trigger guard designed with possible use of winter gloves in mind </li><li>a short buffer spring</li><ul><li>so unlike with AR-15 design you may use fully folding shoulder stocks<br /></li></ul><li>a fully top-folding stock, unfolding it should switch the sight light on and folding should switch it off<br /></li><ul><li> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">example (for a shotgun) <a href="https://www.basspro.com/shop/en/ati-tactical-top-folding-shotgun-stock" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.
I understand this is not exactly top ergonomic, but it doubles as
mechanically protective cover for the red dot sight</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">minimizes the folded length (shorter than telescopic stock)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">narrower than side-folding stock <br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">it discourages
the shooting while folded </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">unlike the ergonomically similarly bad underfolding stocks, as it would obstruct the sight and would be very visible on top</span></li></ul><li>the stock would be angled when unfolded</li><ul><li> so the sight line is directly above the barrel and no bulky carry handle on top would be needed to raise the sight line as with a straight stock</li><li>happens to reduce the silhouette when shooting aimed shots over a cover compared to straight stock weapons with their sights mounted high over the barrel<br /></li></ul><li>no use of a sling, but multiple carrying solutions; the most relevant one would be a cushioned carrying on the back parallel to the spine with magazine well facing outwards (with a quick release interface!), ideally with other things (counterweights) worn on the other side of the spine such that you could even sit comfortably in a (vehicle) seat with the PDW on the back</li><li>cleaning kit either stored in the primary hand grip or stored in the carrying interface</li><li>no such thing as a forward assist</li><ul><li>marginal utility</li><li>understood to be unnecessary in all rifle families but one<br /></li></ul><li>compatible with all cartridges of the calibre at least with unit armourer-level adjustment of the gas operation<br /></li><li>steel parts gunmetal-finished, all other parts in a brown matte unicolour camouflage</li><li>steel magazines</li><ul><li>cheap and durable</li><li>I understand this is an exception from the rule to not need to touch metal in freezing temperatures<br /></li><li>unit-level armourer should be able to measure & replace magazine springs that were worn out<br /></li></ul><li>availability of easy-to-use dry zeroing device on the small unit level</li><ul><li>important for maintaining zero and thus trust in the guns<br /> </li></ul></ul><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Sadly, I do lack both the artistic talent and graphics software skills to illustrate such a PDW concept. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">In the end, such a PDW would be more expensive than mass-produced assault rifles unless it is mass-produced itself as well. There's good reason why a PDW would be mass-produced; the vast majority of military personnel are neither infantry nor dismounted scouts. Those are a minority even in an infantry brigade.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">One problem remains; non-combat and non-scout troops don't have much night fighting ability. Their NCOs may use flare guns for illumination and there may be some lights (essentially state of art of early WW2), but the expensive, fragile and scarce 3rd generation night vision devices and the thermal vision devices (which discharge batteries quickly) would be limited to infantry and scouts. The typical PDW user small unit is thus* at an even more pronounced disadvantage against infantry at night than at day. One could use <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2021/09/affordable-dismounted-combat-equipment.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">cheap digital night vision with some illumination</a>, but would that really be in stock for reservists throughout the 'lifetime' of a PDW (which could be 60 years)? Electronics don't last as long as guns, even when stored properly and separately from batteries.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And then there are other challenges for non-combat troops who need to defend themselves against infantry or scouts. In the end, nothing much more successful than a modest 'always carry' PDW with basic night vision will prevail due to the expenses involved.<br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
S O<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">*: With PDW or an assault rifle like G36 or HK 416 doesn't matter - it's almost entirely about the night vision, training, mindset, organisation and the other weapons.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-45334524225881644992024-01-18T21:03:00.002+01:002024-01-18T21:03:10.470+01:00Houthis again<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span> </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Some ships were attacked by Houthis while they were still south of Aden.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">https://www.ukmto.org/indian-ocean/products/warnings/2024</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Regarding geography: This means Houthis attack ships that are on the far side of their domestic Yemeni enemies. They do clearly attack without any line of sight between territory controlled by Houthis and the targeted ship.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Well, one of the Houthi targets bombed by the U.S. was a radar installation that monitored maritime traffic from onshore. It appears the Houthis can attack ships without such a station. One could argue that they could attack more easily with such a radar installation, but wasn't the purpose of the bombing to end the attacks rather than to make them just a bit more challenging to the Houthis?</span></p><p><br /></p><p>Frankly, here's how I imagine the bombings came to happen:</p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Houthis commit piracy in Red Sea and send missiles towards Israel.</li><li>Sustained attacks on ships by Houthis, mostly defeated by naval air defences.</li><li>How can they be so disrespectful?</li><li>We need to do something!</li><li>What's "something"?</li><li>Out of the box answer is to bomb some brown people.</li><li>CENTCOM gets tasked to create a target list for air strikes.</li><li>CENTCOM cannot exactly offer a strategy with a perspective to achieve much of anything, but it creates a target list with items plausibly linked to the attacks on ships and/or Israel. </li><li>Some targets of the target list get bombed.</li><li>CENTCOM declares success, invents a figure of by how much the Houthis' attack potential was reduced.</li><li>Houthis continue to attack ships.</li><li>More Houthis targets get bombed.</li><li>Houthis continue to attack ships.<br /></li></ol><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Sounds kinda like the Kosovo Air War escalation and two decades of assassination-by-air phony war on errorists campaign.</span><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>It's almost as if the establishment was only mildly intelligent. <br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
S O<br />
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br />
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-11835914701601273292024-01-14T19:49:00.001+01:002024-01-14T19:52:36.140+01:00Response to Houthi piracy<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
I wrote during the times of Somali-origin piracy that the patrolling mission was stupid. It was known by collected intelligence that almost all piracy could be traced back to three coastal villages (at some point in time - this may have changed later). </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The hugely successful (and rapid!) anti-piracy campaign of Pompey the Great cleared the Mediterranean off the pirates plague for centuries to come. It involved a fleet, but the fleet actions were rather supportive of using infantry to clear out the piracy bases. Eventually, some cornered pirate ships stood up for battle and were destroyed.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Historically, piracy wasn't defeated by patrolling. Close blockades of piracy/raider ports was somewhat effective, attacks on raider ports were somewhat effective, but only ending war or at least temporary taking the piracy bases promise a lasting solution to a piracy or raider problem.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">So I denounced the Atalanta mission and argued that piracy should be attacked at its bases.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2008/11/mission-atalanta-or-how-to-demonstrate.html">/2008/11/mission-atalanta-or-how-to-demonstrate.html</a></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">15 years forward, the Houthis commit piracy a little farther north (and there's STILL ships patrolling off Somalia!). It is piracy because the Houthi forces are not recognised as state actors (state forces cannot commit piracy by definition).<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The USN had destroyer(s) in the area and shot down some anti-ship missiles of multiple types (drones mostly with 127 mm guns). Still, the Houthis captured a car transport as an early success (by helicopter, which is impractical now with destroyers securing the route). Western Yemen enjoys a couple thousand new cars.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Is this the time to go for the piracy bases?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">A land war or even only major raids seem out of question; the relevant hardware of the pirates. The U.S. and UK opted for air attack(s).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">First off regarding the legality; I'm confident the internationally recognised government of Yemen was fine with the strikes. Even if it wasn't, the piracy may have provided a legal basis for the strikes (though I have no reliable info that either the U.S. or UK or their ships were attacked).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The practical considerations are more interesting.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">What's the point of bombing other than to vent frustration or do business as usual?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The justifiable purpose of bombing (and the associated risk to protected persons a.k.a. civilians on the ground) would be to reduce or end the threat to ships at sea, the piracy threat.</span></p><ol style="text-align: justify;"><li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Does the piracy threat get reduced?</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Was or will it be ended by air strikes?</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Could it have been neutralised by defensive action (escorting convoys as most navies think or area defence as the USN appears to prefer)? Keep in mind defensive action does not endanger civilians on land.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Could/should the piracy be ended by accepting the political demands (~ending Israel's Gaza war)?<br /></span></li></ol><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">1) Maybe, but it depends on how much the agitated Houthis will react with increases of capability. Their reaction to air strikes might overcompensate for the loss of hardware.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">2) This is almost impossible hardware-wise, and most unlikely as a political reaction.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">3) So far the defences were very effective (and some of the attacking missiles very inaccurate). The biggest problems were the costs of the missiles used and the risk the seamen (especially of the cargo ships) were exposed to.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">4) IMO not a promising approach. The issue would likely flare up again even if the demands were met by now - regardless of whether as a deal or just by coincidence.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I was and am not in favour of the air strikes. They're a primitive out of the box action by utterly unimaginative and strategy-free establishments. Reasons:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">a) The Houthis have been bombed for years by the Saudis with American tech and they adapted already. The hardware that threatens the ships can very largely be hidden almost anywhere in Houthi territory. I have very little confidence in the ability to reliably find and positively identify the proper targets. The risk of civilian casualties is very high. Keep in mind the Americans once mistook a fertilizer factory for a poison gas factory and had a long, long string of poor targeting choices ever since. I don't expect these attacks to get rid of much of the relevant Houthi arsenal. I've seen claims that 25% of the hardware for piracy was eliminated, and I'd rather consider "the 5% most easily found piracy-related targets were hit" as plausible.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">b) Where's the smartness in just blowing stuff up? Let's have a look at the Houthis' interests. They want to rule over all of Yemen. How about reversing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_unification" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the unification of Yemen</a> and the Northern Yemenis (~Houthi movement area) simply govern themselves again as a non-secular people many of whom belong to a different Muslim sect than their neighbours? A de-unification seems to be the only way to calm the conflict in the region (of which piracy is but a small episode) anyway.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">So let's put of incentives towards an internationally recognised, not sanctioned, sovereign North Yemen where the Houthis rule over themselves and their kin. They might also be given some other (free) bargaining chips, such as a coincidental end of the bombing of Gaza (which is to be expected as soon as Israel has swept the remaining smaller part of the Gaza Strip anyway).<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Add disincentives towards continuing other (unacceptable) paths. The Houthis sure don't want weapons and munitions given to their enemies. They don't want a naval blockade against themselves. They don't want the Saudis or anyone else to fight them.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">And most of all: Make that piracy the problem of Egypt. Shame Egypt's junta publicly into action and withhold military aid from them for good (same with Israel, obviously.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Sometimes we get told that smart security policy experts, foreign policy experts, experienced career people, smart admirals, smart generals and smart think tankers are behind what Western security policy does. I do very much doubt that, because primitive stuff like this bombing campaign could be made-up by some drunk low-IQ people just as much.</i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
S O<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-64490379140127305672023-12-30T08:00:00.002+01:002023-12-30T08:59:39.603+01:00A president they deserve?<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
I saw an interesting thought on the internet: What if Kim Jong-Un would run for president in the U.S. (assuming he was eligible; natural born citizen and not an insurrectionist).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I suppose the person who wrote that thought meant to imply that a certain party would fall for such a candidate. I'm not sure said person got right which party would do so.</span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiwNIe7mDR4_IQ-CAlyfnb-rq_JlbFAlKV9iRs15u_nvWvwlI9YHMNSmpZg6cspvx4x1fUkhSwrCOkZP9nUzJsiSYsbWtAJ6BUZmMhrMAxHdsgJqRlOqIG69RQq_WyhaG-M-Yi_Le0e2f7jNiffnaT0mejdkIVa39Rh8Y-TGN7rRGjbOGuvdcbd7XIS1co/s600/Kim_Jong-un_Caricature.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="428" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiwNIe7mDR4_IQ-CAlyfnb-rq_JlbFAlKV9iRs15u_nvWvwlI9YHMNSmpZg6cspvx4x1fUkhSwrCOkZP9nUzJsiSYsbWtAJ6BUZmMhrMAxHdsgJqRlOqIG69RQq_WyhaG-M-Yi_Le0e2f7jNiffnaT0mejdkIVa39Rh8Y-TGN7rRGjbOGuvdcbd7XIS1co/s320/Kim_Jong-un_Caricature.jpg" width="228" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kim Jong-Un <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kim_Jong-un_-_Caricature_%2836564446304%29.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">(c)DonkeyHotey</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>What would Kim Jong-Un bring to the table?</p><ul><li>He's fat.</li><li>He's demanding total loyalty.</li><li>He's got a weird haircut.</li><li>He wants to jail political opponents.</li><li>He wants total loyalty of law enforcement to himself (rather than to the law).</li><li>He wants total loyalty of the judiciary to himself (rather than to the law).</li><li>He boasts all the time (or lets mouthpieces do it for him). <br /></li><li>He loves the allegiance of "his" generals.</li><li>He would love cheerleading news and pundits.</li><li>He loves to play with rockets.</li><li>He brings family members into positions of power.</li><li>He sets up a family member as likely successor.</li><li>He doesn't respect women other than select family members.</li><li>He would promise to punish the deviants.</li><li>He's talking a lot about how he brings greatness to his country (or lets mouthpieces do so for him).</li><li>He would be a nobody without inheriting stuff from his father.</li><li>He's a sociopath.</li><li>He's a serial liar.</li><li>He's issuing threats very often.</li><li>He's an attention whore. <br /></li><li>His accomplishments are propaganda lies - all of them.</li><li>He would promise a proper border protection - with strong fences, landmines and military personnel ready to shoot at intruders.</li><li>He doesn't believe in any god or goddess.<br /></li><li>He's exploiting ideological preparation of the country for own political gain.</li><li>He's in favour of the death sentence, even for innocents.</li><li>He loves holding events where <strike>citizens</strike> subjects cheer him.</li><li>He's never shown any capability of intelligent discussion of any topic.</li><li>He wants to live in a gilded palace.</li><li>The economic well-being of fellow countrymen doesn't interest him.</li><li>His party and country shall follow the leader principle.</li><li>He pretends to be a strong leader, but he's terribly fearful and a pussy.</li><li>He's in favour of torture and abuse of prisoners.</li><li>His foreign policy makes him hated all over the world.</li><li>He's a laughingstock.<br /></li></ul><p style="text-align: justify;">We already know that this is an offer that yields 47% of the popular vote in a U.S. presidential election.<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">I suppose we Europeans should wake up and realise that large demographics of allied countries have left our civilization. It's not just the Russians who are uncivilized. All three serial aggressor countries are at least 1/4th uncivilized.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">related:</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2019/12/lets-open-our-eyes-to-ugly-reality-as.html">/2019/12/lets-open-our-eyes-to-ugly-reality-as.html</a></span><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">also related:</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XUSiCEx3e-0?si=9XcWk8fOL5a4kiDj" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe>
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</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-74893769326470999592023-12-24T12:33:00.001+01:002024-01-01T10:33:32.251+01:00The Suez Canal issue<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
The naval-minded people love to pretend that maritime trade is a bigger thing than it is. They usually <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2018/04/a-deconstruction-of-micc-propaganda.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">use the metric of % world trade in tonnage</a>, while the rest of the world thinks of trade in terms of value (which shows the importance of services and air freight).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Now there's some piracy (considering the Houthi forces as non-state actors) against Red Sea traffic.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Personally I don't mind the impoverished Yemen having some couple thousand brand-new cars, but such piracy does make ship operators shy away from that route.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2013/11/securing-maritime-trade-in-faraway.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I don't advocate that navies from faraway places should police the sea there</a>, but every country is free to waste its money on that, of course. The most obvious navy responsible for the Red Sea is the Egyptian Navy, which <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_Egyptian_Navy" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">nominally has 20 frigates and corvettes in service</a> and the Red Sea is their backyard. The second most-obvious navy is the Saudi one.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Egypt should be especially motivated to secure the Red Sea because an impeded Red Sea maritime traffic means reduced Suez Canal transit fees (FY 2022/3: USD 8.8 bn) for Egypt.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOEX2qUbVvYUd4iwZDN6Ufqk1MmlfTBktm7rhzr7zqnW-VIpdCms_YgvLoifO4sv9EAp5MegZvBAYKNyvjbAov86jLsHBXJWOJE3N5jZ05BYcjrCchGKvp9yb5_myZRKRlXWyyYwIV__Hd39lxwJVRCwOGGq45em1IlHX4KoAkz7b-SRqRMYhxakPgrDv7/s2560/red-sea-map.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1707" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOEX2qUbVvYUd4iwZDN6Ufqk1MmlfTBktm7rhzr7zqnW-VIpdCms_YgvLoifO4sv9EAp5MegZvBAYKNyvjbAov86jLsHBXJWOJE3N5jZ05BYcjrCchGKvp9yb5_myZRKRlXWyyYwIV__Hd39lxwJVRCwOGGq45em1IlHX4KoAkz7b-SRqRMYhxakPgrDv7/s320/red-sea-map.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">But there's the pretence that European wealth depends on the Suez Canal. Just how important is it really to us?</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The short term damage by a partially or entirely blocked Suez Canal is difficult to estimate, but estimation becomes much easier when you ignore transitory effects, as we should in regard to strategymaking and grand strategy.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">8.8 bn $ (about 8 bn €) - why don't the Egyptians levy greater transit fees?*</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Presume the Suez Canal's benefit to the shipping companies is 100 bn $ per year. How much of that would the Egyptians skim off through transit fees? I say no less than 60%, no more than 90%. Less than 60% would be stupid, as they could enrich themselves much more without provoking too much diversion of traffic and more than 90% would too much risk to do exactly that in the long term.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I'm going to argue here that the Suez Canal is not a terribly big deal in the long term for our wealth in Europe, so I'm going to give the other side of the argument the benefit of the doubt and assume that the Egyptians only skim off 60% of the benefit.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Now if 8.8 bn $ is 60%, then 100% is 14.67 bn $. With 8.8 bn $ of the benefit going to Egypt, that leaves 5.87 bn $ benefit for the rest of the world (the remaining 40%).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Now again I will give benefit of the doubt to the opposing side of the argument and pretend that all of those 5.87 bn $ benefit are to Europeans, not to their overseas trade partners.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">GDP of the European Union is 16.75 trillion $ and the GDP of the United Kingdom is 3.09 trillion $</a>. That's a combined GDP (approximating European GDP, but not all of it) of 19.84 trillion $.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">5.87 bn $ is about 0.03 % of European GDP.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Germany's </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">GDP is 4.08 trillion $, 20.56% of the GDP mentioned above for EU+UK. So about 1.2 billion $ share of estimated Suez canal net benefit fall on Germany (the figure would be a bit higher if we use share of goods trade instead of share of GDP). 1.2 bn $ per annum is not a big figure for Germany. It's again about 0.03% of GDP.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">There are 448 million people in the EU and 67 million in the UK. 5.87 bn $ distributed among 515 million people is 11.40 $ per capita. Basically, one meal at MacDonald's.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>I dare say the Suez Canal is not of great importance to Europeans in the long term. The short term transitory effects of its (hypothetical) total blockade would be troublesome, but its importance drowns in statistical noise in the long term.</i></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>One might consider us responsible for anti-piracy work in the Red Sea IF there wasn't Egypt. But there IS Egypt, which is the main beneficiary of the Suez Canal and thus of Red Sea maritime traffic. Yet Westerners are so Western-centric and so eager to play with their own military toys that I haven't even seen anyone else mentioning that Egypt should secure Red Sea trade so far.<br /></i></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>And I don't give a shit about Houthis pretending to fight Israel and Arabs trying to avoid looking like they defend Israel. The Houthis are attacking ships rather indiscriminately and the Saudis have bombed them for eight years already. If the Egyptian tyrant insists on pretence over hard cash, then Egypt deserves to lose billions of dollars, and media should make sure Egyptians understand this. Fuck them, there's absolutely no reason why Westerners should clean up the mess caused by foreign people playing dumb. We got enough of a mess to clean up in topics where we're actually at fault.</i></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Sometimes it's empowering to say "So what?" and to shrug shoulders at miniscule economic losses rather than to allow foreigners and your own irrationally to drive your actions. </i></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Next time you see economic interests used as motivation for military action try to look up how big said economic interest is. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/14/declassified-files-reveal-british-interest-in-falkland-islands-oil" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">supposed oil fields around the Falkland islands</a> used as part of the reasoning for reconquest of the islands in 1982 are still not pumping any oil. </i></span><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
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<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">*: The transit fees are set to rise by 5 to 15% in 2024, but that doesn't change the overall argumentation here substantially. It doesn't mean a 5 to 15% increase in transit fee revenue anyway, for some shipping would be diverted on cost grounds. Future fees should not be compared to past GDP, so I simply used the most recent figures available.<br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">P.S.: Everytime I wrote "Red Sea" I meant the Gulf of Aden as well, of course.</span> <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-37708079511008177972023-11-19T23:26:00.006+01:002023-11-19T23:26:55.207+01:00On people going nuts and supporting Hamas<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
We've seen some strange behaviour by some people in the past weeks. Some people who were famous for something (often advocacy) began to side not just with Palestinians/Arabs, but even with Hamas.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">It reminded me of an old blog post of mine:</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2016/04/thinking-on-military-affairs-and-going.html">/2016/04/thinking-on-military-affairs-and-going.html</a></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I think you need to be a certain kind of person to dare leave the conventional consensus and be an outspoken champion for a change of the status quo. This readiness to turn against the mainstream doesn't necessarily correlate with great judgment, of course. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">All those gold bugs are plain idiots when it comes to economics and monetary policy in particular, for example. They get every single it 180° wrong and don't care that all the evidence is against them. Still, they are people who dare to turn against the mainstream opinion on money.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">So people may have become famous for some advocacy against the mainstream position, and maybe they were right on that one - but that doesn't mean their opinion is a smart one on another topic that they chose to become outspoken about.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Just as famous businessmen are usually delusional when they think they can give good economic policy advice.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Yes, I'm self-aware that I wade into many different topics and am greatly at risk of being wrong in one or another. See <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this</a> about that.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
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</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-5948546415748736132023-11-11T08:00:00.003+01:002023-11-29T10:04:09.658+01:00Armoured raids fuel logistics<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
Let's have a quick thought experiment: How deep could an armoured battlegroup raid (including a fighting withdrawal)?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The Leopard A4 has a "road range" of approx. 500 km (it differs a little from vehicle to vehicle, and this isn't comparable to the range metrics of a private car). The first approximation is that the raid could go 250 km deep.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Kampfpanzer_Leopard_2A4%2C_KPz_5.JPG/1200px-Kampfpanzer_Leopard_2A4%2C_KPz_5.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="531" data-original-width="800" height="212" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Kampfpanzer_Leopard_2A4%2C_KPz_5.JPG/1200px-Kampfpanzer_Leopard_2A4%2C_KPz_5.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Leopard 2A4 <a href="https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Kampfpanzer_Leopard_2A4,_KPz_5.JPG" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">(c) böhringer friedrich</a> (unchanged)</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">But the raid wouldn't be all on roads, so let's use the mixed surface range from the Swedish trials <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/08/afv-mobility.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">that I wrote about ages ago</a>. The practical range was then 167 km. Later Leopard 2 versions are all heavier, so they would probably not even reach 150 km in such a test. So let's say the 2nd approximation is that the raid could go about 83 km deep.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Such a raid would not go linear, of course. IIRC a rule of thumb from WW2 operations was that you drive 100 km to get 50 km forward. The third approximation is thus that the raid could go about 42 km deep.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">There was an old rule of thumb form aviation to always have 25% extra fuel in order to not run out of fuel in case of headwinds, navigational errors - stuff happens. Let's apply a 20% safety margin to the armoured raid - so one 1/6th less range. The fourth approximation is thus that the raid goes to a depth of merely 35 km.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">A tank raid may be unattractive - who wants to give up terrain, after all? So maybe one is more interested in just advancing - but you cannot advance to the limits of your fuel without excessive risks, so an armoured battlegroup advance would still not go 2x35=70 km, more likely the limit is near 50 km. This figure could be pushed up by driving more on road as the Russians did in February 2022 (risky and not promising), but not beyond 100 km.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">A tank is famously characterized by protected firepower with mobility on the battlefield; the famous triad of firepower, mobility and protection (Germans sometimes add "<i>Führungsfähigkeit</i>" as 4th pillar, which is about human action, sensors and communications).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Sadly, the neglect of the variable "range" in "mobility" limits its mobility to the battlefield. Operational actions beyond the battlefield into areas without battle-ready opposing forces is hardly possible without the support of fuel-carrying logistic vehicles. So how many offroad-capable (8x8 or 10x10) logistics vehicles with diesel fuel would accompany the battlegroup? How many at least bulletproofed such vehicles (protection also for the diesel fuel, not just for the cabin) do we have? AFAIK the count is zero.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The consequences of fighting opposing forces of low capability in sandy regions and especially of training on tiny unrealistic army training grounds are merciless. Logistics is about supplying, carrying and living off the land. We need to carry more fuel for more mobility, for else even a frontline breakthrough could not be exploited decisively.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The German military of WW2 was sometimes unable to stop Red Army offensives by fighting the spearheads and resorted to accelerating that they ran out of supplies instead, moving the culminating point in their favour. Ground attack aircraft did better shoot up supply transport on the road than to try destroy the very difficult tank targets in the field. American logistics vehicles deliveries (Lend-Lease) allowed the Soviets to push the culminating point farther ahead of their railheads. This is how you think about operational art when you don't have overwhelming firepower, one side has the ability to break through and you're not mentally restricted to tactical peacetime training on small training areas.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">related:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2015/06/supply-flow-demands-and-logistical.html">/2015/06/supply-flow-demands-and-logistical.html<br /></a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
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S O<br />
</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-14011352389572098512023-11-04T08:00:00.004+01:002023-11-04T09:05:37.420+01:00Too simple minds<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br />
Humans have a troublesome tendency.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">They do often times identify one evil, and then follow a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" policy due to a "the enemy of evil is good" logic. That's obviously untrue.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Sometimes the enemy of evil is evil as well. Sometimes someone whom you identified as the bad guy in one context is the good guy in another context. Vice versa<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Particularly zealous people seem to be particularly vulnerable to this (I suppose it's a) logical fallacy.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">An example is Noam Chomsky, who correctly identifies some evil in Reagan's foreign policies and then stuck with the mind set that the U.S. is an evil imperial power. Worse; he all-too often depicts adversaries of the U.S. as good when they're clearly not.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Another example is Julian Assange. He helped to expose war crimes of the Obama administration and was opposed harshly by the same. This turned him into a hater of the Democrats, without any consideration about whether the Republicans wouldn't have been just as mean, if not worse - both in Iraq and to him.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">There's a similar nonsensical illogic at play regarding the conflict in the Levante.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Some people (who am I kidding? Almost all people!) appear to be incapable of managing enough information in the mind in parallel to think of political actors as separate of the people as a whole or to maintain the thought that being victim in one context isn't in conflict with being perpetrator in another context.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">And don't get me started on how incompetent the notion of war crimes is being handled. Hardly anyone ever read the Geneva Conventions (officers should know the basics, and I can at least say that I read much of the full text of the conventions).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Simple bogeyman thinking appears to rule. Most people appear to pick one hunter-gatherer clan to side with and that other hunter-gatherer clan is eeeevil!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Exceptions are being treated as if they were inconsistent or hypocrites, while I respect them for at least being able to think a bit more advanced than a caveman - even if the conclusions aren't mine.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The worst are of course the racists, who simply force their whole racism bollocks on the topic.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">- - - - - - - - -</span><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">So in case anyone is ever confused about my stance:</span></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Israel has to leave the occupied territories and go back to its pre-1967 borders. The state of Israel is only legitimate within the pre-1967 borders.</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The U.S. is at fault for #1 not happening due to its unethical UNSC vetoes.</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> It does thus deserve a major share of the blame for the mess.<br /></span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Any talk about pre-1967 borders being indefensible is bollocks. It's militarily untrue and it doesn't matter anyway. Singapore isn't exactly defensible either, but that doesn't mean it gets to steal land from Malaysia. The security interests of one country do never justify territorial expansion or occupation of foreign lands. No exceptions!<br /></span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The Geneva Conventions bind the <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Geneva_Conventions" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">signatory power Israel</a>. Violations thereof are war crimes.</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Intentional killing, injuring, torturing or abducting civilians is a crime (at least in customary international law). It's obvious that all parties do or did at some point commit this crime.<br /></span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Israel has a right to close its borders with Gaza, but a naval blockade of Gaza just because Gaza was ruled by a disliked political faction was never legitimate.</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">There's no violence followed by counterviolence in the Levante conflict any more. It's all counterviolence by now.</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Assassinations of non-combatants or against a country without state of war are illegal and deserve sanctions.</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Casual and habitual bombing of foreign countries at will is not acceptable, not legal, never legitimate and must not be normalised.<br /></span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The European politicians have been worthless in the Levante conflict since 1967 (after when France ceased to export weapons to Israel in reaction to it attacking neighbours with French weapons). That's the nicest way to put it that I've come up with.<br /></span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Being a victim in one context does not authorise being a perpetrator in any context.<br /></span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The talk of "Staatsräson" in Germany is bollocks. The German government has to serve German interests, not foreign ones. The word "Staatsräson" or "Staatsraison" does not appear in the constitution, nor does the word "Israel". All this "Staatsräson" talk is bollocks of the same high grade as the "Supergrundrecht" bollocks. Keep in mind #10.<br /></span></li></ol><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The conflict in the Levante is a big mess. Only fools find any "good" party there. Our (Western) handling of the conflict is an embarrassment. It shows the widespread failure of intellect and the all-encompassing worthlessness of Western politicians in this conflict.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The best path to cooling the conflict in the Levante down does include an end to the U.S. veto policy in the UNSC, which is not in sight. Democrats stick to Israel regardless of what its government does (short of nuclear genocide) becuase they don't want to lose the votes of New York City. Republicans stick to Israel regardless of what its government does (limit unclear) because they have a strong pseudo-Christian nutjob faction in their lying moron-dominated party that insists on supporting Israel due to one or another moronic bible interpretation.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
S O<br />
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br />
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-52160921404196406872023-10-28T08:00:00.003+02:002023-10-28T08:00:00.168+02:00Fahrer im Turm<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
There was a German-American project for a joint main battle tank development in between the Leopard and Leopard 2 development. It was too technologically ambitious, too expensive and the two countries could not agree on a common approach or even type of main gun. The project failed by about 1970 already (the Soviets were much more successful with their technologically daring tank project, which became the T-64).<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WCrZL4_ZTX0" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe>
</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.panzerbaer.de/types/bw_kpz_70-a.htm">http://www.panzerbaer.de/types/bw_kpz_70-a.htm</a> <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The turret is so huge for a serious reason: The driver was in the turret. This solves some problems (especially how he gets out through the hatch real quick in case of fire and main gun just above the hatch) and added huge problems.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I suppose that modern technology with all-round cameras has largely overcome those added problems, albeit maybe not for all kinds of battlefield vehicles.</span></p>
<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XOi__MmtN1M" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">A self-propelled gun (SPG) is a category of vehicles that does not require much line of sight combat capability, especially not on the move. So I suppose a tracked (nowadays continuous composite bandtracks) SPG could make use of a driver in the turret. SPGs have the gun in a certain travel position (usually straight forward) during almost all movement anyway.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The further crew could be two men for loading (one for shells, the other for propellant modules). Manual loading with just some power ramming is fairly cheap (unless you insist on active duty personnel all year round), very reliable, low maintenance, very adaptable and there's more personnel for maintaining and securing the vehicle than with a more or less extreme autoloader concept. The driver would be busy driving while on the move, but could be the commander while in firing position. One of the loaders could watch the flatscreens and make decisions for crew on the move. A fourth person would increase volume and weight for allow for a conventional (permanent) commander function and would also add much (but likely not important) combat capability on the move.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Drive-by-wire was extremely ambitious during the 1940's to 1960's, but today it's nothing special any more. A driver in the turret could steer the vehicle easily with drive-by-wire. <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">What's the benefit of having a driver in the turret? You get rid of some ergonomics issues (see the driver escape hatch problem of Boxer SPG) and the vehicle can be a lot (almost 1.5 m) shorter. The vehicle would be reduced to frame, suspension, wheels, bandtracks, a front engine compartment and a big turret. A shorter vehicle is a lighter vehicle, but it would also be less comfortable on rough ground (more pitching movement).<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">S O<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-66042407838741619962023-10-21T08:00:00.019+02:002023-10-21T08:00:00.169+02:00A simplified view on WW2 Eastern Front<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
There are<span style="font-size: small;"> occasionally distorting publications that overemphasize certain things or pieces of equipment in conventional warfare, and WW2 in particular. I will try to guide the reader's thoughts about such subjects to certain essentials.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">From the German perspective, this is what was a must-have (beyond mere sustainment and trivial things) to defeat the Soviet forces in WW2:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>#1: Capture many POWs</b></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The primary tool for this were highly mobile (enough suitable vehicles and fuel) "fast divisions" (not just tank divisions) that enabled encirclements with not too porous pocket walls.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>#2: Kill or maim many Red Army soldiers</b></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The tool for this was ~80% indirect fires; howitzers and mortars. The quantity of available HE munitions was more important than qty of guns. The conflict saw much more KIA than POW in 1942-1945, as the Germans had lost the combination of factors that enabled grand encirclements.<b><br /></b></span></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">#3: Reduce Red Army operational mobility and reduce its supply throughput</span></b></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">The tool for this was (night) bombing or railway infrastructures and especially "railheads" (where supplies were unloaded). The venerable He 111H of 1940 was fine for this even as late as 1945 on the Eastern Front.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><b>#4: Stall Red Army attacks</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Post-WW2 literature recounted that more losses were inflicted on Red Army assault troops by shelling marshalling locations prior to the assault than during the assault. About half of the defeated Red Army attacks were stalled before the small arms fields of fire of the German infantry. So this is in part about #2, but also very much about military intelligence.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><b>#5: Break tank attacks</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">The most important tools for this were by far two basic types of long 7.5 cm cannons; one anti-tank gun (L/46 barrel) and one for AFVs (L/48), which foolishly used different cartridge formats. They proved to be effective enough even in 1945.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Such armaments could have been available in the mid 30's (two such guns existed then) already.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><b>#6: Keep friendly losses bearable<br /></b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">A steel flak vest would have helped greatly, as would have a widespread availability of APCs for infantry assaults and general transportation on the last mile. Most important was proper infantry training, though. 6 month training binds many NCOs, but it leads to much lower casualty rates than 6 weeks training.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><b> #7: Good quality leadership</b> that doesn't waste personnel and material with gross violations of operating principles (Einsatzgrundsätze). </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">This included to some degree good communications including radio tech.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">This may all seem terribly obvious, but it wasn't obvious enough. Different compromises were made, and that led to military disaster.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>You can deduct the importance of things during that campaign from these 7 (8 with sustainment) pillars. I suppose that they are still relevant.</i></span><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
<br />
S O<br />
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br />
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-41703128725133575172023-10-19T14:55:00.001+02:002023-10-19T14:55:34.509+02:00Accidents in warfare<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
There will be a couple severe malfunctions of guided munitions that stray a long distance from their intended target if you launch thousands of them.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The cruise missile that hit Poland while being aimed at Ukraine was an exhibit of this fact.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Likewise, there will be a couple severe malfunctions if you launch thousands of unguided rockets that were mafe under shoddy circumstances.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">It is thus not surprising if and when some munition hits a taboo location in Gaza - a school, hospital or a hotel packed with international reporters.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">It's in that conflict very unlinely that either party would do such a thing intentionally in Gaza, but it is a risk that both parties accept.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>The only really interesting part of a story about a hospital, school or hotel hit by a munition is this risk acceptance in my opinion. You can blame a party for accepting risk, but it's foolish to blame it for bad luck.<br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
<br />
S O<br />
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br />
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-18807083152258045212023-10-14T08:00:00.001+02:002023-10-14T08:00:00.143+02:00Transitory drone tech implications<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
The current use of remotely-piloted vehicles (usually with video feed from drone to user) is likely but a step en route to more or less (likely most of the time) autonomous drones on a battlefield.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">To simplify, I see it like this:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">1st step: manned aviation*<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">2nd step: remotely-controlled aviation with high bandwidth feedback</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">3rd step: remotely-controlled aviation with low bandwidth feedback</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">4th step: partially autonomous unmanned aviation with occasional communication only (mission updates and reports)</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The 1st step can be done without radios.The 2nd step requires a low bandwidth radio uplink for control and a high bandwidth radio downlink, typically for a videostream. The 3rd generation will process the video data such that a much smaller bandwidth downlink is good enough. The 4th generation will make do with less than a kilobyte of data transfer per day if it communicates by radio at all.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The bandwidth is the bottleneck. You cannot have a high density battle with thousands of drones operating in a 5x5 km area and transmitting a 720p colour video feed simultaneously. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">You may have that drone density with the 3rd step, and at the 4th step you could concentrate drones more than any practical necessity. In fact, having very many drones in an area may be beneficial then because drones could relay messages and thus reduce the required power of the onboard radio.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The limitation caused by drones largely using certain frequency bands further reduces how many drones can be concentrated. The <a href="https://www.hfunderground.com/wiki/Remote_Control" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">classic RC channels</a> have already been augmented by 5.8 GHz and drone onboard radios may be built for many different frequency bands (though antenna size and frequency band are linked), but that takes time, and we may just as well progress to step #3 instead. Many other frequencies are in use for other purposes or physically unsuitable anyway.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The drawn-out and long frontline nature of the Russo-Ukrainian War offers step #2 drones great opportunities to shine, though jamming equipment will be rolled out to counter RC aircraft. The question is whether we'll see a high density conflict that requires step #3 drones before either jamming becomes too effective or effective step #4 drones arrive in quantity and assume tactical roles other than pre-planned missions. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
<br />
S O<br />
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">*: Especially notable examples were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_J.I" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the late First World War ground attack aircraft</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylorcraft_L-2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Second World War flying forward observers</a>.</span><br />
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-74790447921380282432023-10-12T11:24:00.004+02:002023-10-12T11:24:48.963+02:00Gaza '23 and more in general: Our politicians are worthless<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
This episode of counterviolence breeds counterviolence is part of an ongoing conflict that's older than my mom. It's kind of not really interesting, just noise of tragedy.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I see only one hot fix that would work for Israel, and that's sweeping Gaza with hundreds of thousands of troops to weaken Hamas before handing it over to Fatah (their political opponents who control the non-occupied parts of West Bank). Fatah regaining power in Gaza like that would lead to its long-term demise, though.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The pursuit of a two-state solution has failed to deliver on its promise and is an obsolete approach in my opinion. Obsolete or not, a failing poly should be replaced by a more promising one.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Suppose there are two children on the schoolyard taunting and brawling every school day, and have done so for years. I understnad it's fashionable to sit down to talk to them, mediate, talk, tlak, talk.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">A more classical (and in my opinion more promising) approach is to not give a s*!t about their opinions and simply enforce the rule that everyone on the schoolyard has to be peaceful, or else will be sanctioned so much that he/she/it regrets to not have been peaceful.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><b>It's time to stop talking to Arabs and Israelis</b>, and to stop hosting talks between them. <b>It's about time they learn to OBEY. They need to obey international law, or be made to regret it.</b> There's almost no prospect that the cycle of counterviolence will end for good just because the involved parties suddenly get nice.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Sadly, the U.S. with its veto power in the UNSC is the main (possibly only) obstacle to this.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The UN(SC) should MANDATE that Egypt takes over Gaza and meets its responsibility to ensure there won't be any attacks on israel from Egyptian (including Gaza) soil. Extremely severe and ten-year sanctions against these countries should commence in 12 months if the UNSC hasn't confirmed their satisfactory compliance until then. Egypt would later be held responsible for every aggression from its soil, just as any country should be held responsible for such a thing.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Ideally, the same should be done regarding Jordan (West Bank) and Syria (Golan Heights), with Blue Helmet (MP, MI and CivMil, not combat troops) support.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Israeli military security concerns about having Egyptian military nearer to Tel Aviv and Syrian military on great vantage points on Golan Hieghts carry ZERO weight, just as Russian desires to have vassal states between itself and NATO carries zero weight.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">There's hardly any Syrian conventional warfare military left, hardly any Jordanian military and the Egyptian military will freeze when the U.S. stops subsidising it. Meanwhile, everybody knows that Israel is a nuclear power with a quite robust 2nd strike capability and all of itself is within range of precision-guided missiles nowadays (which devalues depth). So security concerns about reestablishing the 1949 borders are not very substantial anyway.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Maybe if Germany hadn't such a useless, timid, worthless chancellor we could be part of the solution. <b>A charismatic, fluent English-speaking and decisive German chancellor could pressure POTUS Biden through public diplomacy and behind closed doors diplomacy to not veto a 1949 borders restablishment UNSC resolution that mandates Egypt to take over Gaza and establish security. The time for this is perfect.</b> There are many ways how POTUS could be pressures behind the scenes. Germany could threaten to kick out all American troops without giving them time to set up a replacement for Ramstein, it could threaten to leave NATO*, threaten to sabotage U.S. foreign policy in many ways.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>That would require a non-fossilised, action-oriented chancellor, though. You can't have any good results with a worthless potatoe. I respect the office of the chancellor, I do not respect the person AT ALL. he should rot in jail for defalcation in the CumEx scandal.<br /></i></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The politicians we have can only think in old narratives and thier only actions are about spending money.</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Their inaction thorugh three generations of crisis in the Levante KILL people, just as their inaction in the Mediterranean migration crisis KILLs people.</i><br />
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S O<br />
</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">*: Germany is not threatened itself, <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2010/03/germanys-alliances-ii.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">is also in the EU alliance</a> and <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2014/02/how-nato-changed-perception-of-what.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">there's no such thing as accumulated obligation to stay in an alliance</a>. We can leave the <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_17120.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">North Atlantic Treaty</a> at will, within a year (see its article 13). <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-68694992532403442892023-09-30T07:00:00.001+02:002023-09-30T07:00:00.134+02:00Ukraine and the tank survivability argument<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
Tank forces don't quite shine in the Russo-Ukrainian War, and losses are (slowly) piling up. The Russians and to a seemingly lesser degree also the Ukrainians appear to use (mostly old) tanks for indirect fire support as an alternative to more exposing tactics.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Some people chime in from more or less far away from the battlefield; they suggest (or are strongly convinced) that the tank is in a survivability crisis. Maybe its days are soon over altogether.</span></p>
<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r5nUIV5a3Yg?si=eBYMXwmr5fJq-KJk" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><u>That argument can be made with a look at technology</u>, but <u>the Russo-Ukrainian War doesn't provide decisive evidence that tanks are obsolete</u>.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Evidently, neither Russians nor Ukrainians are competent at employing tanks the way they give best results (akin to 1940 & 1941). They also lack what it takes to employ tanks in the way they crushed hostile forces in brief and brutal battles (1967, 1973, 1991).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The Russo-Ukrainian War shows the demise of the tank no more than did the quite similar Iraqi-Iranian War of 1980-1988.*</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Yes, remotely-piloted vehicles (flying drones) with cheap RPG warheads hit and destroy moving tanks, but those drones could be defeated easily by jamming. Have a look at the range and proliferation of counter-IED cell phone jammers that were deployed in response to roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those roadside bombs did not make road-bound motor vehicles obsolete, did they?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Tanks were always very vulnerable. They were no more than bulletproofed until 1937. The U.S. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M24_Chaffee" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">introduced and successfully used a light tank (M24)</a> during the Second World War in Europe that was easily pierced and destroyed by all anti-tank guns ever built on some of its surfaces even by anti-tank rifles. Light anti-air guns (especially 37 mm calibre) were a terrible threat to it as well. A 16 year old boy could carry an anti-tank "Panzerfaust" that would defeat a M24 light tank at 60 m distance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Tanks formations don't need near-invulnerable tanks to be successful, but they do need certain tactics of employment, and we don't see much of that in Ukraine.</span></p><ol style="text-align: justify;"><li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Blitzkrieg-style rapid advances possibly over hundreds of kilometres for encirclement, inciting chaos, overrunning forces unable to resist tanks or to seize key objectives such as an important bridge: The Russians tried this early in 2022 and failed where they faced much resistance. The terrain Northwest of Kyiv did not allow to move much off paved roads and in Northeast of Kyiv the Russians largely stuck to the main roads as well. A tank gives protected mobility with great firepower. The Russians failed in these deep penetration attacks because they did not use mobility to good effect.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Liddel-Hart's indirect approach of cruiser tanks that seek to attack non-infantry and non-tank forces after breaking through a frontline: Didn't happen. <br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Breakthrough efforts or battles with massed and overpowering forces in Israeli, American or 1943-1945 Soviet style: Didn't happen.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Infantry fire support for very many infantry platoons attacking along the front: Didn't happen most of the time; such attacks have been limited to relatively small sectors.<br /></span></li></ol><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The large and persisting area gains by the Russian armed forces in the South of Ukraine during Spring 2022 happened mostly because Ukraine had very, very few troops defending in the South. The advance stalled once the Ukrainian reserves arrived and the Russians had to withdraw to the Kherson bridgehead for months until they had to give that up, too.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">- - - - -<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Again; a case can be made that (autonomous!) drones render mechanised forces obsolete in a couple years, but the 'moderately competent' forces fighting in Ukraine don't prove it. We saw that kind of blundering before (Soviet Union 1941, Iraq-Iran War). Tanks do only produce great results with very competent forces. <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">A case can also be made that manned combat aviation is obsolete (for several reasons), but the very largely unsuccessful employment of airpower over Ukraine does not prove this, either.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
S O<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">*: Misnomered in English into "Iran-Iraq War" to hide the fact that the subject of American hate, Iran, was the victim of aggression rather than the aggressor.<br />
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-41831449463742078192023-09-23T08:00:00.001+02:002023-09-23T08:00:00.148+02:00Road march speeds in WW2<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">
I remembered some data from road march speeds during WW2 (and the 50's) and found something curious. First, let me tell you about the data:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The historical daytime road march speeds* varied from event to event, but the rules of thumb were</p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;">4 kph ~ 30 km/day<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;">marching on foot, horse-drawn carts and artillery (not taking into account resting times)</p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;">60 km/day<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">European-style horse cavalry (10 kph for slow canter and up to 20 kph for fast canter for a brief forced march)</p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;">18...20 kph</p><p style="text-align: left;">bicyclist troops</p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;">20+ kph / minimum 200 km/day (rarely done 150+ km)<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">This applies to both tracked and half-track motor vehicles. Crew and passengers were exhausted by vibrations and noise. Both troops and vehicles needed many maintenance stops.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">This speed probably also applied to motor-towed artillery, as artillery ordnance had poor suspensions and was thus often speed-limited, such as up to 30 kph except in emergencies. Even today most towed artillery is limited to 60 kph.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;">40+ kph / minimum 300 km/day</p><p style="text-align: left;">wheeled motor vehicles (likely 50...60 kph on good paved roads)<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Wheeled motor vehicles had a substantial road march speed advantage (likely more pronounced compared to tracked vehicles than just 3:2*). Yet there was no substantial use of all-wheeled motorized formations as quick reaction reserves. They weren't even undisputedly dominant among armoured reconnaissance in Europe.<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The disadvantage of a-wheeled armoured fighting vehicles goes beyond just inferior soft soil mobility compared to tracked and most half-tracked vehicles. The first tanks became shell-proofed instead of just bulletproofed by 1937, a move that wheeled armoured vehicles never matched. They have a too large armoured area compared to the more compact same-weight tracked designs (same problem as with half-tracks unless you reduce the wheeled front to an unprotected skeletonised structure). Armouring wheeled vehicles up to 60+ mm steel would make their ground pressure unacceptable on soft soil (true to this day, despite much better tires and CTIS).</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;">So the wheeled armoured vehicles were not able to prevail in the gargantuan military experiment of the Second World War, despite attempts and already-understood hard soil/road mobility advantages. Even the ability of 4x4 motor vehicles to tow anti-tank guns and the ability to move even divisional field artillery portée (carried for march, set up like towed guns for firing) or as self-propelled guns on wheeled motor vehicles did not lead to such quick formations.<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">
This begs the question why exactly they became such a fashion in 1999...2003 and later (post-2003 rather 4x4 and 6x6 MRAPs than 8x8 APCs). The Kosovo and Pristina deployment embarrassments and armies panicking about "relevance" cannot be the full explanation. Buying all those vehicles was really expensive, so I doubt the advantage in operating costs over tracked vehicles was a strong real argument, either.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The introduction of central tyre inflation systems, wider tyres and improved self-locking differentials did reduce the disadvantage of wheeled vehicles on soft soils, but their rise in weight more than countered this.)<br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">
S O<br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a></p><p style="text-align: center;"> </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">*: I mostly remembered these, but checked Middeldorf/Handbuch der Taktik just to be safe. The minimum 200 km and minimum 300 km figures stem from it, I think both downplay the wheeled motor vehicle mobility of the time. A ratio of 200:450 seems much more plausible during that period. The cruise speed was double and the need for maintenance breaks was lesser with wheeled vehicles. Both tracked vehicles at 200 km an wheeled vehicles at 400+ km would have required one refuelling break, but refuelling was possible by decentralised use of jerry cans and fuel drums.</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-12520650045008681142023-09-16T08:00:00.050+02:002023-09-16T08:00:00.147+02:00SEAD, Russian style<div><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
I don't know much about how the Soviets intended to attack Western air defence radars. I know they had a couple radar jamming helicopters that were highly effective against IHAWK and they had a MiG-25 version that would fly at very high altitude at very high speed and launch some big anti-radar missile before running away.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The French had a less spectacular approach. <a href="https://www.key.aero/article/kill-radar-analysing-now-largely-forgotten-armat-missile" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">They used their own anti-radar missiles for use by ordinary Mirages and Jaguars and had Elint suite to support their employment</a>. They had no dedicated anti-air defences aircraft.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUfs-8uoSo-fwbMXTsEkDw2wUGky-k6gk3I1-x30fY0intz993qJiAKmFB_mKrqkzXHq0tOxwCFqUpqwgUFG0dW08nu8DLaP3MURMrSu5OcVhhSzmK3Pqd14DFvXECSWJNv5aqhXqkQ4ti7oHyOsnU4XqUNQTYpHd38CLT0k-L2DtX5yAdkOBfdKwvahgL/s562/Mirage%20Armat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="341" data-original-width="562" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUfs-8uoSo-fwbMXTsEkDw2wUGky-k6gk3I1-x30fY0intz993qJiAKmFB_mKrqkzXHq0tOxwCFqUpqwgUFG0dW08nu8DLaP3MURMrSu5OcVhhSzmK3Pqd14DFvXECSWJNv5aqhXqkQ4ti7oHyOsnU4XqUNQTYpHd38CLT0k-L2DtX5yAdkOBfdKwvahgL/s320/Mirage%20Armat.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The Americans developed their sophisticated and expensive SEAD/DEAD (suppression enemy air defences / destruction ...) over North Vietnam. It included dedicated wings with specialised antenna-laden two-seat aircraft and two different anti-radar missiles (one of which was terribly expensive and the other had a variety of seekers against different radars). Standoff Elint and jammer aircraft supported all this. The dedicated anti-radar aircraft would find and engage radars, but the actual destruction would often be left to accompanying fighter-bombers that went close in and bombed the air defences similar to how American fighters of WW2 strafed and bombed Japanese air defences to reduce the threat tot he following bombers. This American approach was developed further and they now have a versatile anti-radar missile, satellites help with finding radars and they mess with the radio communications of an integrated air defence. The American approach excelled over Iraq in 1991, but it failed to destroy most of the old Yugoslavian air defences in 1999. <br /></span></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The Israelis used quantity low level strikes to roll up the Egyptian air defences in 1973 and later introduced <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Harpy" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ground-launched anti-radar drones</a> and <a href="https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/2021/03/07/israels-radar-busting-shermans/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ground-launched anti-radar missiles</a> to their DEAD mix.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;">All this is public knowledge. So what do the Russians do over Ukraine?</p><ul style="text-align: justify;"><li>They sometimes targeted air defence high value targets with a precisions trike by ballistic PGM Iskander.</li><li>They provoke air defences with cruise missiles and drones. </li><li>They sometimes use remotely piloted vehicles (Lancet drones) to attack air defence high value targets close to the front<br /></li><li>Some of their fighter patrols and strike fighters carry a (rather big) anti-radar missile, ready to shoot at targets of opportunity and presumably hoping that this capability also protects the aircraft itself.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Stills from a new Izvestia clip that show a VKS Su-35S multirole fighter returning to Baltimor (Voronezh Oblast) from a combined CAP/SEAD sortie armed with two R-37Ms AAMs, two R-73/74Ms AAMs & a single Kh-31PM ARM. Interestingly, no R-77-1 AAMs (possibly launched during sortie). <a href="https://t.co/TH2d57mVii">pic.twitter.com/TH2d57mVii</a></p>— Guy Plopsky (@GuyPlopsky) <a href="https://twitter.com/GuyPlopsky/status/1689908715292602368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 11, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
</li><li>They fail to overcome Ukraine's Soviet-era air defence systems even though they know them to 100% detail and had 30+ years time to train against them.</li><li>No published information (AFAIK) about effective airborne jamming of Ukrainian air defence radars</li><li>No published information (AFAIK) about effective airborne jamming of Ukrainian air defence communications</li><li>No published information (AFAIK) about effective use of satellites (presumably because the Ukrainians change positions briefly after certain Russian reconnaissance satellites passed them)<br /></li></ul><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Even the German air force might be more effective than that in DEAD (using its few Tornado ECR, a couple radar satellites, commercial photo/IR satellites, GUMLRS PGMs, Taurus and a small stock of old HARM missiles)!<br />
</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I could draw up a fantasy force with an extremely resilient yet still affordable air defence. It would be necessary to deny the Americans effective use of bomb runs, even against their strike package tactics. Yet it's entirely unnecessary against the Russian armed forces, which are so crappy that they fall well short of meeting expectations based on a 1991 air campaign that lasted a few weeks. They had one and a half years. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><b>We need not look further than <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the 40 years old Buk-M1 system</a> if we want to see what an effective counter to Russian combat aviation looks like. </b>You'd at most need some gun-based system to keep them from being effective at terrain-following flight (less than 200 ft altitude).<b><br /></b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Meanwhile, the Western military-industrial complexes focus on gold-plated cutting edge air defences. This makes sense to some degree (you need lock on after launch missiles to engage targets at very low altitudes and modern datalinks and processors sure make sense), but it's also very expensive. <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2018/05/summary-modern-air-defences-for-europe.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I'm guilty of this as well</a>, but in my defence; at least I saw the need for some cheap missiles to defeat munitions (cruise missiles, smart glide bombs) in the mix.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">related:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.key.aero/article/investigating-russias-lack-seaddead-capabilities-over-ukraine">www.key.aero/article/investigating-russias-lack-seaddead-capabilities-over-ukraine</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2016/01/air-force-strike-packages-and-peer-wars.html">/2016/01/air-force-strike-packages-and-peer-wars.html<br /></a></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
S O</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a></span><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-3897639110292077022023-09-03T20:08:00.006+02:002023-09-03T20:08:30.249+02:00The direct/indirect fires armour battalion - tactics<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
I realised that I didn't describe the tactics for the armour battalion for the <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2023/04/a-compact-and-agile-exploitation-brigade.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">exploitation brigade</a> properly.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">That battalion has four companies of tanks that are very good at shooting with high explosive rounds in indirect fire (up to 42° maximum elevation, with sufficient accuracy out to 15 km).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The idea is this:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The companies tend to manoeuvre as such (platoons maybe spread over 3x2 km). A pair of companies is close at all times, so there are two pairs manoeuvring around.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Now one company gets into contact with dangerous hostiles. The nearby other company of the pair moves into flanking position. They might also act as a leapfrogging couple in a delaying mission or during advance.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The other pair can do the very same, and whenever a pair is ion contact the other pair (about 4x3=12 tanks per company) would be available and be at a good distance for giving indirect fire support with good effect (this would be difficult at short distances in many terrain forms).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">This is part of the reason why it makes sense to have four tank companies in that battalion, not three. With three you'd have either two companies giving such indirect fire support or one indirect and one direct fires (line of sight) support. That's A LOT less and would not suffice, as the brigade was designed to not require a separate artillery battalion (there are a few mortars in the concept, though).<br /></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
S O<br />
</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386077914312449748.post-3523993846232053722023-09-02T08:00:00.001+02:002023-09-02T08:00:00.133+02:00Exotic ancient weapons: (X) The sasumata<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
I did consider to continue the series with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasumata" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">sasumata</a> or the (not terribly exotic or ancient) boar sword, but did put this off for a long time because the sasumata seemed too impractical, too weird to me. I saw a lot of weird weapons from the Indian subcontinent and the Philippines, but the sasumata seemed too weird.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLRae2tGTg2ozf4ay_JGOlERm7k20y34K8JbXR0QlpI4zmzAJxlYD0o14ruySaKQlqvTUFx5eKvG-YjQMI8IhZWk1_2k-IV0BcU11qUXz34TWYrO-syvLCVsKglwEIXXx6ifRTMWbouH4XKNuTu_Ew2V-Q8Ax4RNgmZcEXNIT_yY8QfdAxJzwJweGjxMGf/s240/Sasumata1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="240" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLRae2tGTg2ozf4ay_JGOlERm7k20y34K8JbXR0QlpI4zmzAJxlYD0o14ruySaKQlqvTUFx5eKvG-YjQMI8IhZWk1_2k-IV0BcU11qUXz34TWYrO-syvLCVsKglwEIXXx6ifRTMWbouH4XKNuTu_Ew2V-Q8Ax4RNgmZcEXNIT_yY8QfdAxJzwJweGjxMGf/w400-h400/Sasumata1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>Yet I saw it's actually still in use. That blew my mind. It's one of those things that are truly alien in some other part of the world.<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdBcCQawuU3LWKlv-0XH7pgZrzclcysQwRHeeGeYDVvCNeMLd8OWQ6itfn_FTZVbfSfkEk_EsHDUYjTOwSMwkWOngSgy3_j3tReprRL7YVLR3hRQr2BGqsi4yar6ORHzEYyb5XhVoC8ntJZEBtWMPwyE2Uh305psok3PAxDitHMNWnynO1Zn0oX1tqwwOE/s602/Sasumata2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdBcCQawuU3LWKlv-0XH7pgZrzclcysQwRHeeGeYDVvCNeMLd8OWQ6itfn_FTZVbfSfkEk_EsHDUYjTOwSMwkWOngSgy3_j3tReprRL7YVLR3hRQr2BGqsi4yar6ORHzEYyb5XhVoC8ntJZEBtWMPwyE2Uh305psok3PAxDitHMNWnynO1Zn0oX1tqwwOE/w400-h225/Sasumata2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=712413385991462">facebook.com/watch/?v=712413385991462</a><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
<br />
</span></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The brave police of Communist China fear no opponent! <a href="https://t.co/oHL1kqiKLt">pic.twitter.com/oHL1kqiKLt</a></span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">— China Uncensored (@ChinaUncensored) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChinaUncensored/status/1691472372702781442?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 15, 2023</a></span></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;">It's even worse; this to me totally alien concept of a weapon/police tool was actually also a thing in Europe: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_catcher">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_catcher</a></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">It would (in a non-thorny version) probably be useful in the UK, where many suspects are armed with a knife.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">S O</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<a href="mailto:defence_and_freedom@gmx.de" target="_blank">defence_and_freedom@gmx.de</a></span><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
<span style="color: #ffffcc;">.</span></span></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3