Defence and Freedom

About my strange fixation with crisis situations

2012-01-25T19:25:00.000+01:00

Steve McQueen played a USN engineer in the movie "The Sand Pebbles" (1966). His character preferred the dirty work in the engine compartment to the relative luxury on higher decks. When asked about why he didn't delegate work in the engine compartment to Chinese helpers, he replied something along the lines of 'I like work with the engines and besides, the Chinese only know how to polish the engine, they don't repair it.'

This is the finest example for the importance of extraordinary challenges (crisis situations) I can come up with. Everything may be shiny despite incompetence as long as the problems are ordinary, but it takes expertise to handle (or even prevent) extraordinary problems.

Way too many businesses shine with great profits in good times, their management cheers about its own competence - but in a crisis they fail. That is a problem of moderate severity. Military forces exist under a much more extreme regime. Military forces face almost never truly extraordinary problems (most don't do so for a generation or more), but once they do failure would have catastrophic consequences.

One of the reasons why this blog is so un-mainstream-like is that I disrespect the polish and shine demonstrated under ordinary conditions and care so much about competence in extraordinary conditions. This may look disrespectful to many, but it stems simply from my different opinion about how relevant demonstrated performance under fair weather conditions really is.

For example, a ten year war in which one side doesn't lose a single entire platoon is NOT a true test, it did NOT provide extraordinary problems. Extraordinary problems would in my book pose the question "how many or our brigades were destroyed?". "How many", not "whether any".

Well, this was an explanation about why I pay so much attention to crisis situations (type "crisis" in the search field on the left side if you care). I figured it deserved such an explanation, and I figured that this explains a lot of the differences between my thinking and mainstream military writings.

S Ortmann
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A post in between

2012-01-25T01:38:00.000+01:00

I didn't post anything here for a while - the reasons are simple as always on such occasions: The remaining drafts are no good and there's nothing really to write about.

It would be somewhat interesting to talk about all the occasions when I stumbled on people who believe in the usual suspects for unjustified fascination (such as turreted heavy mortars).

Journal articles about such extremely imaginative articles as armoured logistics vehicles (really? In 2011? Why did they write endlessly about wheeled medium AFVs in 2003-2005 when armoured logistics really was a hot topic?) annoyed me as well.

There are furthermore endless quantities of extremely unimaginative reflex articles about Iran, China, Cyber-something and all the other fashionable subjects out there.
I'm not working under the illusion that I could somehow influence this mainstream, but it's quite disappointing to find so very little good quality stuff in and outside of the mainstream even after years of paying attention.

The many budget-focused debates on military policy aren't exactly intellectual highlights either. The odd reports about oil near the Falklands and about a supposed threat to shipping in the Persian Gulf seem to test how gullible taxpayers really are. So far, journalists appear to have failed that test in my opinion.

It's certainly interesting to observe how lobbyists and agitators can pull off the same stunt for three decades (or after three decades) and still get attention.

- - - - -

Finally there's also this sad report:

Homeland Security Wants to Spy on 4 Square Miles at Once

I began warning about this in 2007 and did so in 2010, too. It's creepy to look at how this unfolds. Would love to have been wrong on this.

It reinforced my opinion that one of the best possible things you can do with national ministries is to destroy them every decade, send all of their personnel with even minimal leadership roles into retirement. That would be an excellent way to save taxpayer money and troubles.

- - - - -

Some good news; I'm working on a book review (a biography), but that's overdue as well since I received the book in November already. The book is in German and wasn't translated, so the review may be in German as well.

S Ortmann
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Wait, what? Are you trying to piss Europe off?

2012-01-14T22:26:00.000+01:00

The United States has an interest in promoting a NATO-like political and military alliance among its Sunni Arab allies in the region as a balancing force to Iran. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), composed of Saudi Arabia and the other smaller Sunni countries on the western side of the Persian Gulf, would ideally be the basis of this balancing force.

This Week at War: Playing Risk

by Robert Haddick

So this sick obsession with Iran leads the U.S. to promote a new alliance in the vicinity of Europe which could turn into a threat to Europe in the long run? Are they trying to prove ultimate recklessness and disregard for allies' national security or what?

I hope European politicians and intelligence agencies haven't totally lost sight of the long term and are going to sabotage this.

The disunited Arabs are fine as they are. Buy some diaper if you cannot cope with the idea of a weak and backward country thousands of miles away from yours not being friendly.

S Ortmann
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Official U.S. opinion: Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon

2012-01-13T00:19:00.000+01:00

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/09/panetta-admits-iran-not-developing-nukes/

OK,this came a bit as a surprise to me, after all the rhetoric from that side of the Atlantic.

It appears that certain analysts' speculations about Iran just trying to come close enough to a nuke for having the threat of building a nuke as deterrence were not only interesting, but probably accurate.

That's an awfully risky strategy, of course.

Now I wonder how all those sanctions can be justified, for Iran doesn't even appear to violate the (actually not especially highly ranked) nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

S Ortmann
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An association (Fun)

2012-01-10T20:00:00.002+01:00

This

reminded me of this

Go figure.

The "Euro" crisis and defence

2012-01-09T00:17:00.000+01:00

Predictably, I won't discuss the Euro crisis with whining or ranting about military spending cuts. I'm for WELL-ALLOCATED military spending, not necessarily for MUCH.

Instead, let's summarize the roots of the crisis first;

Many European agreed on a common currency and had high hopes for it. Many people hoped for idealistic progress (a sentiment of being Europeans), others hoped that national problems would e solved and others simply expected further improvement of their wealth.

Well, most hopes were disappointed.

It turned out that economic science with its optimal currency area theories (some of them pro, others contra the project) had delivered the correct warning: Dissimilarity was still too great for shedding the balancing mechanism of flexible exchange rates.

Without flexible exchange rate, some countries (mostly Germany) experienced an export boom and at the same time an inhibited consumption while others experienced an unsustainable and huge trade balance deficit. Some economists blame the false confidence of lenders (mislead by supposed creditworthiness because of the low-inflation Euro currency). This false confidence led to lending beyond creditworthiness and sustained bubbles for a while.

Meanwhile, even Germany -in a superficial macroeconomic view the winner of the game- did not really prosper. Reforms had pushed the competitiveness of our industries up (this turned out to be an unnecessary move) and imports were relatively expensive because of the (for Germans) 'weak' Euro.

The lack of flexible exchange rates was one problem; the lack of a lender of last resort the other. Germany had insisted on a central bank which did not act as a lender of last resort. The German hope (and condition for its membership) was that ECB policies and rules would force some fiscally shaky Euro members into fiscal discipline and thus keep them from harming Germany indirectly. Further rules for this purpose were established (and in part violated by Germany itself).

This was essentially a bet. It seemed to work fine for years (budget deficits were moderate and some member states such as Spain were very fiscally disciplined).

It also proved to be disastrous in crisis. The 'lender of last resort' thing was an important safety in crisis, and without it multiple Euro zone governments (at least two of whom had done good fiscal policy for years) went downhill in creditworthiness.

The obvious way out - allowing the ECB to be a lender of last resort - is a short-term fix that holds little promise in the long term and is especially not in Germany's interest.

Well, Germany isn't interested in the troubles of leaving the Euro currency itself, the governments in trouble don't appear to try it either and the economies don't fit together. It does not work.

From a national security standpoint, the worst about all this is the demonstration of political ineptitude,the rule of ideology and the political division. The crisis has been ongoing for years and there's still no effective solution, but merely weak patches.

The Euro zone governments are not ready to admit that once the pro-Unified Europe ideology has led them into failure. They prove their inability to correct the original mistake, being stuck in various dynamics and in ideology.

I've repeatedly argued for a national and collective defence concept which keeps military strength levels moderate until the need for more arises.

Now it looks as if there would be a terrible lag between the rise of a major threat and a unified European response. Furthermore, it looks as if the European economies are in a too poor shape to sustain great military strength indefinitely without major reforms. Reforms that are not on the horizon yet.

Maybe some readers from beyond the Atlantic rejoice now about this confirmation of their suspicions (or prejudices) about Europe. I'd like to tell them that there's little reason for it. The U.S. government is obviously blocking itself and quite incapable of major action as well. Europe does not meet its intra-European imbalances with proper policies, and the U.S. does neither solve its intra-American nor its trans-Pacific imbalances.

I have a suspicion that in decades to come, social scientists will have wonderful models about how and why we moved into such deadlocks. I'm not so positive that they'll also have a consensus about how to break such deadlocks.

In the end, we're living in very lucky times. We don't have a solution for our collective imperfections on the horizon, but there's no major threat on the horizon as well. Truly lucky.

S Ortmann

War should always be the lesser evil - or not be

2012-01-07T14:01:00.000+01:00

"War should always be the lesser evil - or not be"

This (my) SWJ Blog guest text offers nothing new to long-time Defence and Freedom readers, but might be of interest as well.

S Ortmann
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Defence and Freedom's year 2011 visitor statistics

2012-01-01T05:19:00.000+01:00

Statcounter's statsitics for Jan 08 - Dec 11

This blog faced a slump in blogging activity (in posts/month) and in visitors ("page loads"), but had a comeback in the last quarter of 2011 (December 2011 has no slump, unlike earlier Decembers). 20k per month appears to be the new normal here.

A second factor (other than activity on my part) for the stagnation (no increase in visitors for about one and a half years) might be the dropping interest in military affairs after the Iraq War and a decade of direct Western involvement in the Afghanistan Civil War.

Or maybe I have already reached almost everybody who's interested in this blog's tiny niche?

S Ortmann
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Discipline and mutual trust - the basics of robustness in combat

2011-12-31T12:14:00.003+01:00

Discipline

Historical German army experiences stress that the need for discipline has its roots in the extraordinary demands of combat itself.

The German keyword here is Gefechtsdisziplin - combat discipline. It's the compound of obedience with thinking and comradeship.

A (small) unit cannot withstand the stress of battle without discipline, thus discipline needs to become natural for army soldiers. It needs to be trained with discipline in little everyday affairs, but the superiors should always remember that it's combat, not the everyday affair that warrants this effort!

This is of utmost importance, for exaggerations that do not pursue the goal of robustness under combat stress will stifle the "thinking" part that's of great importance for actual performance in battle (and for developing leaders).

As a consequence, it's quite unimportant whether all soldiers wear the sleeves up, down or whether they mix it. They may march in lock-step or not.

All that counts is that superiors used enough discipline standards to instil and maintain discipline. Discipline is a skill that need training and maintenance, it is not a performance.

Mutual trust

Trust is another almost all-important ingredient for robust combat units. Cohesion enhancement measures such as esprit du corps, regional recruitment or common food for all ranks are one path towards building mutual trust. To lead by example is another important one.

Trust is an important defence against wavering under stress, and it's the primary bonding agent of units. It's furthermore of great importance for low level independent action and for the reduction of friction.

Combat discipline and mutual trust are the basics of robustness in combat.

Gucci gear personal equipment, modded rifles, expensive tanks, big budgets and even combat experience are no substitutes and all built on feet of clay if discipline and mutual trust are gone missing.

To prove a force's superiority over an (obviously) lesser opponent does not in itself prove that the job of building and maintaining discipline and trust was done well.

Only crisis in face of local opposing forces' superiority reveals a force's basic soundness.

"Combat proven" or not - we better pay attention to the basics. Tools, toys and numbers already get more attention than necessary.

S Ortmann

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T00:01:00.015+01:00

Merry Christmas to everyone!

(I embedded from an obscure Asian website because of Youtube-related copyright issues that annoyed Germans for years and would keep Germans from seeing the embedded video from YT.)
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The German government went downhill in terror hysteria, but not this badly (yet)

2011-12-22T19:12:00.000+01:00

For Christmas, Your Government Will Explain Why It's Legal to Kill You

(hat tip to BoingBoing)

The government dropped a bomb on a U.S. citizen,

who, though a total dick and probably a criminal, may have been engaged only in propaganda,

which, though despicable, is generally protected by the First Amendment;

it did so without a trial or even an indictment (that we know of),

based at least in part on evidence it says it has but won't show anyone,

and on a legal argument it has apparently made but won't show anyone,

and the very existence of which it will not confirm or deny;

although don't worry, because the C.I.A. would never kill an American without having somebody do a memo first;

and this is the "most transparent administration ever";

currently run by a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Imagine anyone would have told you during the Clinton administration that this would happen.

S Ortmann
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New comment policy

2011-12-21T19:40:00.000+01:00

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Whoever clicked on "Comments" was able to read this:

Use a nickname and stick to it, please. I feel free to block anonymous comments at will. Offensive comments may also be blocked, in part due to the duties of a blogger in Germany.

I changed it to this

Use a nickname and stick to it! I will block anonymous comments. Offensive comments may also be blocked, in part due to the duties of a blogger in Germany.

and I mean it.

I'm fed up with lots of anonymous comments. It's not that difficult to type two or three more times. Choose something simple like "QQ" if you're really lazy, but choose a nickname and stick to it, please.

S Ortmann
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Not so good times for political taboos

2011-12-15T00:01:00.000+01:00

The UK is saying no to a European treaty (again after over 50 years abstinence from this), Canada going to bail out of the Kyoto treaty's restrictions ... it's apparently season for breaking political taboos.

I wonder what this is going to mean for formal alliances.

Might some countries bail out of such alliances when the cost/benefit ratio turns red?

Maybe this is rather about emboldened national interest-led foreign policy that heralds an age of less cooperation on international issues?

Will the taboo-breakers be worn down or replaced soon by opposition politicians as was the Polish Kaczinski government (which proved to be very 'uncooperative' in the EU)?

Maybe there's going to be more foreign policy action/activism once foreign politicians begin to think that they're not expected to get everybody into the same boat (think: OIF)? Would such non all-inclusive actions be unwise because naysayers have good points (think: OIF)?

I don't think anyone can be sure about his/her ability to predict these things, so I'm not even going to try. Foreign policy might become more interesting in the next years, though.

S Ortmann
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KoW on top leadership qualification

2011-12-14T21:55:00.000+01:00

Francis Grice on KoW:

"Should I be the leader of our armed forces?"

That's an interesting and somewhat funny blog post on the importance of matching skills and tasks at top leadership positions (and elsewhere, too). He in turn referred to another article which flew below my radar.

Traditional hierarchic organisations narrow down towards the top like a pyramid. The complexities of the various tasks exceed the education and training of the top leadership. This would likely even be the case if they had been educated towards top leadership tasks as were monarchs in earlier times. Even monarchs with their decades of top notch training and education rarely performed very well. Today's world is much more demanding.

The orthodox approach is thus to have staffs with diverse skills and a top leadership that's willing to draw on the staffs' advice and smart enough to understand it.

Grice scratches on the surface of an alternative: Why not exchange top leadership when the tasks change?

Or, less unusual, why not demand that top leadership is primarily about assigning specific tasks and specific powers to competent people for specific challenges? The other top leadership's job would then be to keep an eye on the whole and to steer a course through the whole of the challenges, a job for which nobody is fully qualified.

This is of course not totally new, but Western military and political establishments weren't exposed to any extreme challenges for decades and appear to exhibit a degree of incompetence that's deeply irritating (this ranges from terror hysteria over economic policies to ridiculously inept military operations such as Atalanta).

Sadly, erosion of skill and lack of strong characters in the political and military staffs might be part of the problem. There's a reason why Grice was talking about academics as alternative to in-office leaders, not about staff geniuses.

S Ortmann
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"Coyote" brown is the new grey

2011-12-13T00:01:00.001+01:00

Steingrau-Oliv Feldanzug with Parka

About a hundred years ago, grey was found to be a shade (not exactly a "colour") that doesn't attract attention and is thus viable as a basic camouflage colour in pretty much every environment.

I'd argue that even the Bundeswehr's Cold War-era standard individual camouflage was a mixture of grey and green (officially "Steingrau-Oliv", also commonly called "Moleskin" or "olivgrün").

I've noticed that -at least in the anglophone world - the time-proven grey appears to be out of fashion. The Multicam pattern fashion swept away some stupid camouflage patterns, and the colour "Coyote" or "Coyote brown" (a shade of brown) appears to be the colour in fashion for applications without camo pattern. It reminds me of the famous khaki colour which played a similar role as grey outside of Europe

The reasoning is simply that some equipment does not need a camouflage pattern or should be usable with different camouflage patterns. This applies to pouches or very small items, for example.


Example: Multicam + Coyote

The No.1 concern is of course the contrast to the camouflage pattern; a stark contrast between patterned clothes and light brown equipment might make the soldier very discernible even in advantageous terrain. That's in part a general problem with the shape of the equipment and in part a general problem with homogeneous colouring.

Adding regularly shaped monochrome components to a well-designed camo pattern is not the way to go in regard to minimum detectability, after all.

The namesake, the Coyote, doesn't have a single large monochrome patch on his pelt. It's rather using different shades of colour for his evolution*-optimised pelt.

A coyote, photograph by G Dan Hutcheson

A force that's really serious about optimising its individual service members' camouflage cannot rely on a combination of a good camo pattern and a monochrome accessories colour.

The way to go is in my opinion - and this should not surprise since I advocated this for years- to primarily rely on shapes for camouflage, not on colouring (see here as well).

This in turn means that not only the attention on more or less fashionable camouflage patterns is ill-advised; it's not very important what colour or pattern you use for accessories either.

The colour "Coyote" has the advantage of being more pleasant to the human eye than grey, and is thus likely a good choice. It's furthermore OK to use it for accessories together with different camo patterns - as long as we're not talking about the normal Flecktarn or similar rather dark camo patterns.

The contrast between Flecktarn and Coyote would be too great, too discernible. I'm not very much in love with the darkness of normal Flecktarn anyway, but it's undisputedly great when you're hiding in the dark shade of a tree or other large object (and it's usually hard to hide anywhere else anyway).

S Ortmann

*: I guess that counts as evidence for Anti-Americanism for my troll(s). ;)
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Quick recommendations

2011-12-12T00:01:00.002+01:00

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1st quick recommendation:

Bill Sweetman's article in DTI about the waning importance of radar and thus also of radar stealth in fighter technology and tactics (page 40).

2nd:

A website that does the fantastic job of making Sextus Julius Frontinus' "Stratagems" treatise on ruses in ancient warfare accessible to everyone (who has WWW access). I wish there was an equivalent book about modern warfare.

S Ortmann
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A training military?

2011-12-11T00:52:00.002+01:00

Many countries are not in danger. Meanwhile, they have really good ideas about how to spend their government revenues on non-military purposes.

Would it make sense for these countries to go into a full and overt training mode, giving up the claim that their military is combat ready?

I'm thinking of countries such as Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa or Bulgaria.

How would this look like, assuming a country of small but noticeable size such as Belgium?

First, it would require some diplomacy. NATO members would tell their allies about fiscal troubles and a military in training mode without readiness until further notice.

Next, all procurement programs would need to be adjusted and the personnel system would need to be adjusted. The ability to expand the military into a ready and capable force of substantial size would become the mission within the constraints of the given (small) budget.

The air force could operate a squadron of old (so called "4th generation") combat aircraft until it receives the cheapest modern combat aircraft (Gripen?) as replacement for worn-out aircraft. The pilots would receive civilian, multinational and allied foreign training. It would make no sense to operate an own pilot training system at such a small scale.

The navy would probably have two multi-purpose frigates, two mine countermeasure boats and two conventional submarines. This should suffice to keep the personnel informed about modern naval tech and tactics. Major exercises would happen together with allied forces.

The army would probably keep a few battalions of heavy, light and para/mountain troops as well as a few artillery units. The overall size would probably amount to a small division. The forces could -if the country is allied- be under command of a bi-national army corps, in order to offer corps operations training to some officers.

The personnel system with its focus on the ability to expand would need to focus on intelligent, promising recruits as well as many shortly-trained reserve NCOs and reserve junior officers. The active forces would see many of the enlisted personnel slots occupied by soon-to-be reserve personnel of junior NCO ranks. The remaining enlisted personnel would basically be soon-to-be (reserve or active) NCOs. The skill in training personnel would be highly valued and fostered through training and education (in adult education).

The only missions outside of allied territories would be either observer missions with 2-4 personnel each or embassy emergency protection missions.

Equipment procurement would be oriented towards standard equipment that's suitable for intense training use (so for example no T-90 MBTs) and the operating costs should be low if possible (=low fuel consumption, low training ammunition prices, low spare parts prices).

The overall effect would be that modest savings could be coupled with the ability to expand to a considerable and effective force within few years. This might look unsatisfactory in the short term, but is likely superior in the long term. An underfunded and thus demoralised force that pretends to be combat-ready but is in reality hollowed-out would in my opinion be an inferior alternative use for taxpayer money.

S Ortmann
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Salami slicing doesn't seem to work in Germany any more

2011-12-07T22:18:00.001+01:00

The political reactions to the revelations about a small gang of murderous Neonazis* were as predictable as often times cynical.

It took only few days till the old gang of closet pro-police state folks resurfaced with their stereotypical call for more surveillance, more data collection, more law enforcement and intelligence powers.

The hip shot political proposals of the federal ministry of the interior mirrored this, but were apparently stopped cold by our liberal (anglophones read: "libertarian") minister of justice Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.

This woman is really the only excuse of their party for being in the gubernative.

As usual, the pro-police state folks forgot to make a connection between their claims and real-world effects of their proposals. Too many of our domestic security laws never proved more than marginal effectiveness, and to propose even more of that kind was disingenuous.

The ministers of the interior and the so-called 'law and order' faction should rather pay attention to fight against bullshit in law enforcement. There's too much politics involved in police leadership. The highest of the three police career tracks is most often being dominated by party affiliations, not by meritocracy or -even better- a proper personnel selection based on potential for the job.

On top of that, I'm still waiting for news about people getting demoted for failing in the affair.

The good news is that the salami slice tactic of adding one police state element after another appears to have come to a halt. Maybe sometime in the near future we'll even have a minister of the interior who's got the ethics, humility and self-discipline to not jump on the pro-police state bandwagon on his first opportunity?

S Ortmann

*: They don't really fit the description of "terrorists", since they did not do any actual propaganda. They were rather a murder-robber gang living in the underground and enjoying an incredible series of law enforcement failures.

Direct democracy: You do it wrong

2011-12-07T00:40:00.001+01:00

An intelligent (honest) recruitment video

2011-12-02T12:00:00.001+01:00

I still like this one better, though. ;)

An ethical argument for a Schwerpunkt in warfare

2011-12-01T22:45:00.001+01:00

Carl von Clausewitz developed the Schwerpunkt most likely under the impression of the double battle of Jena and Auerstädt in 1806. If only the Prussian army had been able to units its two main forces on one of the two locations, it could have defeated the French piecemeal instead of being defeated in parallel.

Carl von Clausewitz

His conclusion was the theoretical idea of a Schwerpunkt; focus on what counts, and draw as much strength away from lesser tasks as possible. You don't want to have the smaller battalions in a decisive battle.

The bigger battalions don't always win (empirical military history research yielded this counter-intuitive result), but they do so ceteris paribus (=if all else is equal).

To mass more troops for an important (THE important) battle is one way of how to acquire an unfair advantage prior to the decisive fight.

He called his concept "Schwerpunkt" based on a totally faulty understanding of Newtonian physics (he believed Schwerpunkt is where the most mass is concentrated), but he's not alone with confusion about terminology. The U.S. ground forces distorted Clausewitz' concept of a military Schwerpunkt beyond recognition.

Too much intro? Bad news, there's a second intro following:

Unlike some people's misguided beliefs, war does not mean that ethics can go overboard, hostile humans lives become worthless or that maximum destruction is an objective or at least desirable.

War means that you attempt to force your way to an acceptable outcome - and you do so with violence.

Violence that does not improve the outcome has no purpose. Such violence - death, mutilation and destruction - is as much unjustified as it would be during peacetime, applied to your own people. Some of this unjustified violence is unavoidable because you often cannot judge in advance its effects correctly, of course.

(Remark: The point of having military theory and doctrine is not just to reach a politically acceptable outcome in war; it's also about trying to keep the costs low!)

Good news; intros are over, now the real message:

Now what kind of violence in warfare is pushing for a desirable outcome and what's just dumb violence?

This is where the Schwerpunkt concept proves to be incredibly handy: Just apply it. Armies teaching and applying the original Schwerpunkt concept tend to end up with battle plans and decisions that have a Schwerpunkt (at most two; practical application is a bitch). Nothing that doesn't improve the odds of success at a Schwerpunkt is really improving the general outcome. A minor battle (let's say it's bloody to make it feel easier to follow the thought) - a bloody minor battle that doesn't influence the outcome at a Schwerpunkt is likely just unjustified violence.

An example (mentioned in an earlier post): Harassing fires are being despised by front-line troops rightly. Harassing fires rarely have important effects, but they make the whole mess even messier.

On the other hand; yours truly is a proponent of operational skirmishing. Wouldn't all such skirmishing be unjustified violence, far away from a Schwerpunkt?

Well, the Schwerpunkt concept evolved over time even in Germany. A Schwerpunkt does not need to be a small area on a map. It could even be a variable.

For example, a U.S. 8th Air Force bombing campaign Schwerpunkt during May 1944 and later was the destruction of German synthetic fuel production. They were not totally true to this (did many other attacks and spent much more resources than necessary), but for a while they kept their focus on it. The Schwerpunkt was no single battle location, but a critical economic activity.

Skirmishes could indeed be the Schwerpunkt themselves. Skirmishing would only be wasteful and unjustified violence if it's so poorly employed that it's got no operationally relevant effect.

One way how to improve the world is to make sure more officers understand that violence in itself does not necessarily serve a purpose (even if it entails no friendly casualties), that they can make wars less messy by judging the relevance of possible violent acts and to consider this as input in their decision-making.

Military history is quite rich with examples of bloody battles that were utterly unnecessary and politically irrelevant. Such tragedies are usually best-documented when they're most appalling, such as when they happen immediately before or even after cease-fires and peace treaties.

The useless Battle of New Orleans and useless bombing of Dresden were such examples.

Military theory is not exactly strong in regard to omitting possible violence. Doctrines are more focused on how to make violence effective on a tactical level. Peacetime doctrine is even weak on economising on supply expenditure and personnel exhaustion (through stress and sleep deprivation).

There's still a lot of work ahead.

S Ortmann

Let's assume...

2011-11-30T14:37:00.001+01:00

Let's assume the German public was interested in military reform.

Whom would it ask, who's an expert?

No "insiders" are trustworthy, for they have to be loyal to one party of any military reform debate, to the sitting minister of defence. A discussion with input only by them would be totally biased, thus you need to balance them at the very least with their untrustworthy counterparts from the other side.

We have almost no think tank culture, so we're being spared the experience of talking point propagandists from think tanks infesting our news.

As far as I can tell, the media tends to prefer retired generals (and only those who weren't 'fired') as experts in regard to military affairs. Its preference in regard to security policy is rather in favour of talking to foreign policy people.

- - - - -

Quite frankly, I don't like this preference for retired generals. It has a systematic bias towards institutional conservatism. This will serve us ill if we'll ever have a substantial public discussion about a military reform that's not merely about conscription and various numbers. Any public discussion for example about whether air mechanisation is (was) worth buying so many so expensive helicopters or just a fragile pipe dream would almost inevitable be tilted towards conservative views of old men.

The problem is of course to get a public discussion going about such topics in the first place. It's simply not happening, while some fiscally comparable civilian projects were be a national discussion for years (think: Transrapid maglev train) - and the average Joe was just as poorly prepared to form an opinion about them as about military matters.

Yet, we should get it right if we ever manage to discuss such topics and have some actual democratic oversight of our forces with a very general participation.

Back to the old men.

Let's think of two men; one 'reformer' (pro-innovation) and one 'conservative' (contra-innovation).

The 'reformer' will be enthusiastic about a novelty in his 20's and 30's, work son getting his ideas recognised in his 30's and 40's and will either fail (and not become a general) or succeed (see his ideas in action and probably become a general).

Even IF the reformer makes it to general, he'll be in his 50's or 60's when interviewed by the media as expert. By that time the novel idea will be already be 20-40 years old and it would be the new status quo.

In other words; by the time of the interview even the reformer would be a conservative (and at most understand the drive of young officers for innovation), just like the other guy who was conservative all the way.

Eurocopter Tiger, source: "Stahlkocher" (Wikipedia)

Maybe the media needs to find other sources (maybe foreign experts who don't need to be loyal to any German institution or politician? Maybe more active service officers should write books? Maybe we need a journal about military topics that's not a PR front for ministry and industry nor a wanking stimulator for mil fanbois?) if it ever wants to inform the public well about a military reform.

That would of course first require some attention and even interest.

Luftmechanisierung / air mechanisation was a major German army experiment that was never publicly scrutinised (it was in my opinion rather a stupid excuse for 80's procurement plans during the 90's and dropped in all its ambitious parts once the funds were secured). There may have been a damage of several billion Euros due to our inability to scrutinise such military projects publicly.

S Ortmann

A minor border incident

2011-11-28T15:16:00.006+01:00

The Islamic Republic of Iran appears unimpressed by U.S. complaints about a minor incident at the U.S.-Mexican border. 25 U.S. soldiers were reportedly killed and 14 more wounded when Iranian attack helicopters opened fire on U.S. soldiers in a Texan border village a few days ago.

The Iranians have helped the Mexican government to suppress the rising drug cartels in a decade-long civil war. There are repeatedly complaints about how little the U.S. does about its huge pool of drug abusers who create the world's greatest demand for drugs and pull Mexico deeper and deeper into drug crime-driven chaos.

U.S. officials complain that the attack on the border post was unprovoked and dozens of other U.S. troops have supposedly already been killed by such attacks since summer, but the media in Iran and the entire Muslim world dismiss this as typical propaganda claim of a government that isn't trustworthy due to its tolerance of drug demand and the overt corruption of its political elite.

Iranian representatives declare that they will investigate the incident.

A report is expected to be finished once nobody cares any more.

edit: Astonishingly, I appear to need to point out satire when I use it even when I think it's totally obvious.

edit2: Apparently the 'opposite' to this satire isn't big in the news in all Western countries. Now who would have guessed that? It may explain some of the comments (which I blocked because the writers might feel embarrassed.)

The CFE treaty seems to collapse

2011-11-23T15:08:00.000+01:00

U.S. to stop sharing data with Russia under arms pact

That's one more nail in the coffin. An end for the CFE would probably mean the end for non-standard treaty-dodging weapons such as 98 mm mortars. More importantly, it would remove a Rubicon between now and arms racing time.

The latter is of heightened interest because the Russians announced (again) a major re-building of their conventional ground forces during the 2010's.

The blog of choice for keeping an eye on their efforts is in my opinion Russian Military Reform.

S Ortmann

On German sovereignty and the fiscal crisis in Europe

2011-11-22T08:54:00.005+01:00

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Having regained sovereignty and full liberty only in 1990, many Germans insist especially on German sovereignty. I can't offer a poll, but it's obvious that we have a background that nourishes such an insistence more than average.
This is relevant in regard to the current fiscal crisis in Europe.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/11/21/fear_of_a_german_europe

This article covers one or two perspectives for how to look at the current crisis; extraordinary times lead to extraordinary challenges to national sovereignty.

Are the collapsing governments collapsing because of inappropriate foreign pressure?

Does the German government (of which I'm no fan, btw) impose some kind of German rule on Europe?

On the first question I'd say yes, there's inappropriate outside influence, but in the end this is about representative democracy. Many countries do not elect their head of government directly, but through parliament. Parliament has a mandate for legislation and picking a head of government for a set period (such as four years, for example). It's perfectly constitutional and working as intended if these members of parliament pick a new and unexpected head of government during that period. They're supposed to, unlike many commentators imply.
It's not what we're used to, but it's perfectly within the bounds of representative democracy. Don't blame outside pressure - blame their constitutions. Then again, it's their job to be bothered about their constitution, not a foreigner's.
So yes, foreign pressure had influence and demands were inappropriate, but the countries are still working as intended in regard to selecting their cabinets.

- - - - -

Now about the German influence. Germany says no to several actions (such as ECB lending money directly to states or a step towards a transfer union) that were agreed not to happen in treaties years ago. These parts of those treaties were in German interest and were part of the trade-off that led us to sign and ratify them. Plus; they're important to us.

The other countries want to get rid of those rules without doing the legally obvious thing; leaving the treaty (and lose THEIR trade-off benefits) themselves. Instead, they want us to forfeit our advantage (and timportant monetary policy standards) and accept a violation of legally binding treaties. They want our government to ignore legal norms, to accept our membership in a treaty that's being executed differently than legitimated by German democracy (signed and ratified) for Germany.

In the end, they want us to forfeit our sovereignty in favour of their advantage. After all, the supposed German dominance that now exists over Europe is nothing but the insistence on adherence to treaties that were signed and ratified by all Euro zone countries.

I cannot spot a German threat to the sovereignty of other European countries or a German plot to rob others of their benefits, but I pretty much laid out how their striving for a violation of treaties demands us to become subject to a treaty interpretation that we never agreed to. It's an assault on German sovereignty!

Keep in mind; the European countries that dislike the German insistence on the treaties as written on paper are free to exercise their sovereignty and cancel their membership in any treaty any time. They should blame their negotiators, not the German government that pursues German interests - as is our right since we regained sovereignty.

It's astonishing that this can already be interpreted as a threat to others' sovereignty.

S Ortmann

P.S.: Short version:
"They" want Germany to be subject to an agreement that it never agreed to, nor would have agreed to.
"Germany" wants "them" to be subject to an agreement they actually agreed to (until they exercise their right to quit it entirely).
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Recalls for peace?

2011-11-14T17:32:00.000+01:00

Quick thought:

The U.S. Americans are practising a thing called "recall". Recently, a couple state senators were replaced by special elections that were triggered by petitions (that met a certain quantity requirement).

This made me think about something.

How about an automatic triggering of a special (potential recall) election for all federal politicians who supported military action without obvious self-defence character (= repelling an invading army, defending in air war or breaking a naval blockade) or unambiguously worded UNSC approval?

They wouldn't have to fear much if they have much popular support (= almost a necessity for successful modern warfare), after all!

S Ortmann

Sniping: History and theory

2011-11-13T15:49:00.006+01:00

Snipers (the real ones, not the occasional rifleman whose position is unknown) have become a fashion during the last about 15 years.

It began in my opinion during the SFOR mission where snipers were wanted for counter-sniping and for giving junior leaders on the ground some 'surgical' weapon that would be practical against a target in between civilians.

New sniper rifles were developed and bought, sniper training was reformed - all measures that responded to the perceived need and were easily squeezed into the budgets.

Civilians with interest in some military things turned into sniper fanbois and there was almost some sniper cult again. The accurate long-range sniping proved to be especially fascinating, and long-range records claimed in Afghanistan with ~~anti-tank~~ ~~heavy sniper~~ "anti-material" rifles caught a lot of attention.

I'm still not sure that the role of a sniper in the grand scheme of land warfare is understood, thus this text (about my opinion on it):

- - - - -

First of all let's remember the roots and history of sniping:

Back in the 17th century it was largely about sitting in wait during a siege until an aimed shot of sufficient promise could be fired at either the besieger or the besieged. Even earlier than the 17th century this was regularly done with heavy crossbows, often as means of killing time for terribly bored aristocrats up to kings.

Back in the 18th and 19th century, sniping had its importance in taking out enemy officers. Many 18 century European armies had light infantry units with rifles (muskets were the common infantry weapon).

There was even an age of rifles from the 1850s to the 1880s when blackpowder rifles were practical and often out-ranging the artillery of their time. Artillery personnel became thus badly endangered by sniping. Magnifying scopes were introduced for sniping afaik during the 1860's.

U.S. Civil War sniper

Up till the turn from 19th to 20th century, long range accurate rifle fire was simply not decisive in battles.

This changed with smokeless powder around 1890; smokeless powder made machineguns practical, gave rapid long-range fire more practical value (and made salvoes less necessary), and it enabled accurate long-range rifle fire. The key was the improved muzzle velocity (about +50%).

The first real test became the Boer Wars, fought on suitably open land. The British were thoroughly embarrassed by the accurate long-range fire of the Boers (to be fair, they were embarrassed by their poor marksmanship training more than once during the 19th century). Even as of today it's easy to find references to great Boer marksmanship - but a statistical look at the duration of firefights, rounds expended and casualties does not support them. The Boers did rather suck less in marksmanship than the British, and were at times in superior positions.

The result was an emphasis on long-range and quick rifle fire during the 1900's, and pointed "spitzer" bullets were introduced to make better use of the smokeless powder's capabilities.

The First World War did not experience much long-range rifle fire, but it's the birthday of modern sniping. Snipers were commonly shooting at few hundred metres distance (still preferring scopes because very often their targets were tiny slits or trench scopes). Suddenly, camouflage, concealment and deception became most important. The ability to hit at very long range was almost irrelevant.

There's more to sniping in WW1: Snipers were almost universally 'disliked' by regular infantry, on both sides. They were only welcome when they arrived to take on a harassing enemy sniper. Sniping at regular infantry was despised, for it regularly provoked revenge in form of artillery and sniping. The regular infantry suffered from sniping and revenge against snipers. Their stance may sound somewhat selfish, but I think it has a lot of merit. Harassing actions rarely serve a good purpose.

First World War sniper

Sniping fell into de facto disuse in several armies during the Interwar Years, the Germany army went to war in 1939 without a proper sniping scope. Some German thought on what's nowadays known as designated marksman or squad sharpshooter didn't yield much more than a poorly designed rifle scope for DMs that became the best scope available for actual snipers.

Eventually, sniping in WW2 turned out to be rather similar to sniping in the First World War (but less trench-specific). Shots that required high-powered scopes were rare and some snipers did much without any scope.

Post-WW2 sniping looked usually quite the same; very long range shots were rare, camouflage was very important. The Germans again allowed snipers to almost fall into disuse because of the dominant 'quick armor clash' WW3 scenarios. Again, it only issued some scopes for normal service rifles, this time at least a mediocre 4x scope.

Now about the theory (actually, my generalising conclusions):

(1) Sniper fire should be held back as a deterrence when both sides have strong sniping capabilities.

(2) The only time when sniper fire is a really great asset is when the enemy cannot retaliate against their use effectively or during combat involving regular infantry fires.

(3) Moreover, nowadays the ability of snipers to see without being seen is much more valuable than their marksmanship.

First about the deterrence thing: Mere harassment is useless unless it serves a real purpose. It merely makes warfare more messy without it, and that's simply not desirable.

Second the lopsided case; an enemy who cannot retaliate much against sniping will quite inevitably learn that there's little reason to hold snipers back. This is when they really rack up successes. Keep this in mind when you allow Afghanistan reports to influence your appraisal of the relevance of snipers.

Finally about fieldcraft: The first compact radios were introduced during WW2, and by the 60's really compact radios with decent range were commonplace in modern armies. This enabled snipers to become forward observers. The firepower of mortars and artillery is obviously totally superior to the firepower of a rifle or two. Calling for fire support entails some risk of having your radio transmission triangulated, but you don't need to give away your presence with a shot. I don't even think of muzzle flash and bang, but of the fact that a rifle shot usually comes from within a kilometre, while indirect fire may be based on spotting from much longer distances. Sniping thus provokes a greater (more dangerous) effort for spotting the sniper than do indirect fires.

Snipers with their extreme fieldcraft (camouflage, concealment, deception, movement techniques, choice and preparation of positions) are furthermore important for the improvement of regular infantry. This mirrors somewhat the importance of light infantry heritages for improving regular infantry during the First World War. The "see without being seen" thing should become commonplace in Western infantry (I don't mind it al all if non-Western infantry doesn't do it!).

The attention gained by long-range shots fired by snipers is in stark contrast to their relevance in great wars and in even bigger contrast to their real importance. Serious people should not pay much attention to long-range shots, but instead consider snipers as deterrents and forward observers, probably most important as fieldcraft benchmarks for our regular infantry.

S Ortmann

P.S.: A WW2 video on a German wartime sniper course, meant to familiarise regular troops with snipers and their skills. It might work on interested blog readers, too.

Der Deutsche Scharfschutze Part.1

Der Deutsche Scharfschutze Part.2

Der Deutsche Scharfschutze Part.3

edit: Slightly related photos from a Russian sniper course.

On national defence

2011-11-11T19:15:00.000+01:00

I've recently stumbled on the topic of relative military spending and force sizes in NATO again. The childish "free ride" talking point aside, there's in my opinion simply no good reason for increases in military spending in Europe. We could make our forces fitter with the current budgets - and even fitter with a smaller budget.

These forces would still suffice - just as they do today.

Look, NATO was meant as a collective defence bulwark against the Kremlin-guided forces. Germany promised and raised 12 divisions to guard the Central European frontier of the alliance (total strength there was 26 divisions).

For a very short period after re-unification we had about 14 divisions. Now it's much less (and has admittedly too much overhead). Does this mean we're bad at defence? Hardly.

There's no huge Kremlin-controlled army any more, after all. The 'threats' of today were not or would not have been taken seriously enough to be mentioned as 'threats' during the 80's.

The Arab forces deteriorated much and are still largely on the other side of the Mediterranean, without noticeable naval capability. They're not exactly hostile to Europe anyway.

Iran is on the far end of Eurasian NATO member Turkey and its parade/museum/stunt forces look weak in comparison to Turkey's power. Iran is also on quite OK diplomatic footing with Turkey.

The Caucasus countries can raise armies that are barely comparable to a European NATO heavy division in strength. Again, no hostility to us there.

The Ukraine has retained a tiny fraction of the former red hordes, but the equipment is largely rusting and rotting, decades old and on top of that they're -you guess it already- friendly to the EU.

Finally the forces left under Kremlin control, the Russian army. They're a plausible threat to the Baltic EU and NATO members; Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Only Estonia seems to have noticeable diplomatic troubles with Russia from time to time. Now, do European militar forces suffice to defend the Baltic?

First of all, they would come late. The Baltic Sea happens to freeze at times and block some ports, airports can be turned into concrete versions of Swiss cheese and the land connection with the Baltic is basically one road. So even the glorious 1991 14-division army could not intervene there in time.

The Russian army is on the other hand so much neglected, rusting and rotting that by comparison the EU military budgets were lavish and EU military forces well-trained, well-equipped.

Is the U.S. approach of throwing near-endless amounts of money into the armed forces a better security guarantee for the Baltics? I doubt it, for Washington DC is thoroughly disinterested in the region for any other purpose than using it as a pool for auxiliary forces, a source for UN assembly votes and a region of potential proxies for the sabotage of EU consensus-requiring decisions.

The question is not whether (continental) Europeans could fight their way out of a symbolic wet paper bag. They question is whether they could if there was one at all. Right now, there's nothing.

The forces of NATO's EU member states could defeat all neighbouring non-allied countries simultaneously in a conventional war and two of them could basically nuke every country to 'some other period', including the U.S..

What we're lacking is not the capability to defend ourselves, it's the capability to launch punitive strikes and expeditions in U.S. fashion. We do so because our defence would happen at home, there was no ocean between us and the Cold War front line. We never needed aerial tankers for trans-ocean fighter deployments, we never needed a high seas navy to reach our enemies, much less did we ever need aircraft carriers for national defence. Our fighters can basically sortie from paved roads - how would big expensive aircraft carriers and their can of worms of expensive escort ships and logistical support help our defence?

This is, btw, one of the reasons for why we get much more combat power for the buck than the U.S. does. We simply don't need so much long-range logistical support and we don't do expensive forward deployment much.

- - - - -

The real problem in regard to military readiness isn't one of current budgets. Budgets are superficialities.

The real readiness challenge is to be ready for worse times. NOT with a fully built-up force with high costs of maintenance and reinvestment, but with, well, readiness.

We need readiness

(1) to recognize a military power build-up in the periphery (China's army is irrelevant to Europeans)

(2) to have the political will to build-up ourselves with a minimal political lag

(3) to have the economic and fiscal health to sustain such an arms race if necessary (or else it won't impress anyone)

(4) to have the economic capability and diplomatic relations for the timely procurement of good equipment for the forces

(5) to have decent equipment designs on hand, suitable for a conventional great war (not the same as MRAPs and assassination drones!)

(6) in our industry to actually produce the equipment; heavy industries, automotive, aerospace, chemical, electronics, shipbuilding, machine building industry

(7) in our officer and senior NCO corps; the readiness for a personnel expansion without terrible loss of competence.

Let's face it; the U.S. and UK approaches are great for bullying developing countries in distant places and it's great for certain domestic special interests, but it sucks in regard to some of these points.

The U.S. shipbuilding industry is a laughing stock, especially if you subtract the Great Lakes shipyards. U.S. and UK equipment is frequently gold-plated (big ticket items) or inferior due to internal politics (everyday items such as small arms). The fiscal and economic health is 'questionable'.

I wish for defence policy discussions that discuss these readiness challenges.

Budget discussions are for special interest lobbyists, run-of-the-mill journalists and people who prefer to not look beneath the surface.

S Ortmann

Quick lecture on military budgeting in an exceptional country

2011-11-06T23:40:00.000+01:00

That country is truly "exceptional", for this doesn't appear to work anywhere else, after all !

S Ortmann
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Everything about Iran has to be bad, apparently

2011-11-04T01:03:00.001+01:00

"KAHLILI: Iran already has nuclear weapons

Western intelligence has known it for years"

The military blogosphere -if blogs picked the story up at all - was not pleased. So far the only reactions I found the story to be horrible (if true).

Now think again. What would it mean if Iran has had operational nukes for years?

It would mean that they didn't even bother to use them for the purpose of deterrence, much less actually use them or even give them to terrorists: All the horror scenarios about Iran's behaviour as nuclear power would have been obliterated by recent history.

Yet, many people are so much conditioned to think that everything about Iran is bad that they don't really seem to think any more.

S Ortmann
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Interesting German newspaper commentary on the Greek referendum

2011-11-01T18:55:00.001+01:00

There's an article about how suddenly the democratic idea of the nation's (= the people's) sovereignty is being forgotten when a referendum (in this case the Greek one on the debt deal) might not yield the desired outcome.

Im Minutentakt las man gestern, wie Banker und Politiker drohten und drohen, die Börsen brachen ein. Die Botschaft war eindeutig: Die Griechen müssten dumm sein, wenn sie ja sagten. Und Papandreou ein Hasardeur, weil er sie fragte. Doch ehe die Panik-Spirale des Schreckens sich weiter und weiter dreht, ist es gut, einen Schritt zurückzutreten, um klar zu sehen, was sich hier vor unser aller Augen abspielt. Es ist das Schauspiel einer Degeneration jener Werte und Überzeugungen, die einst in der Idee Europas verkörpert schienen.

I've seen similar comments in other contexts as well; especially when there were referendums about joining the Euro or about joining the Lisbon treaty.

My impression is again and again that a ruling oligarchy of professional politicians and top corporate figures perceives democracy ever more as a deception of the masses away from the oligarch's power, not as the only legitimation of governance.

This works even in micro scale, as for example in the half-humorous affair about the "Bud Spencer Tunnel".

The only good referendum is a referendum that agrees with the powers that be.

S Ortmann

P.S.: This is not meant as a conspiracy theory text, but as an observation about a creeping slide away from living democracy towards democracy as a facade. One could come to much, much more extreme views on how this country really works.

Confused by German palestine policy

2011-10-31T21:54:00.000+01:00

This doesn't make sense.

We practically went to war in 1999 to support the Kosovars against the supposedly ethnically cleansing Serbs, guarded Kosovo, recognised Kosovo, subsidised the genesis of a Palestinian state through the EU for years - and now we're voting against Palestine's membership in UNESCO even though our government should have known in advance that this application would succeed?

This sounds devoid of principles to me, to say the least.

By the way; congrats to the Palestinians.

S Ortmann

On the Central Quest of Military Art and Theory:

2011-10-24T00:01:00.030+02:00

The pursuit of the decisive, "unfair" (net) advantage over the enemy.

Many recipes have been developed over time for the accumulation of such an advantage. Clausewitz developed the military Schwerpunkt, Erfurth wrote a book about surprise, v.Schlieffen became fixated on encirclement battles and especially Cannae, ancient writers such as Vegetius already wrote about training, strategems and rules of thumb (Master Tzu).

It's been also a classic approach to overpower an enemy with superior numbers. This took in modern times the shape of overpowering the enemy with superior military budgets during peacetime and superior industrial output during wartime.

The modern approach is typically a combination of almost all known ones, epitomised in doctrine manuals and organised training.

The central theme in almost all of these ways is to seek victory/success before (or even without) a fight. You strive for being the almost safe winner of a battle before you go to battle. All else would be negligent.

This is where the previous post kicks in; it's important to draw a strong line between small contacts with the enemy and the big battles.

The focus is usually on the big battle; popular military history is especially fixated on battles.

That is disconcerting, especially in regard to military theory development, for battles should be among the least interesting episodes of a skilful campaign. Battles should be pretty much decided prior to their initiation. The real challenge is ahead of a battle.

By the time a battle would be accepted, the enemy should be so much disadvantaged that he better withdraws and accepts a pursuit (a common occurrence in turning movements and 18th century army-manoeuvring campaigns). The withdrawal and pursuit -albeit no easy thing for either party- were in many historical wars the really big affairs. The losses of an army after its ranks were broken were usually much bigger than during battle itself. There were exceptions (such as Greek inter-Polis warfare, Pacific Island battles, 1st World War), of course.

The only thing that's better than to pursue an enemy without needing to break his force in battle first is to encircle him. Thus the aforementioned Cannae fixation of German military during the 2nd and 3rd Reiche.

The focus should be -today as ever - on the accumulation of a decisive net advantage. Later on, this advantage has to be realised.

This is a bit analogue to seeing the value of your stocks rising; you also need to sell them at some point in order to cash in. Stocks rising in itself is of no value.

The accumulation of a decisive net advantage may happen through diplomacy, force building, reconnaissance, ruses, skirmishing, positioning and many other known components of military art and theory.
The realisation (exploitation) of the advantage require battle, pursuit or -best of all- peace negotiations. A political move will be the ultimate realisation of the accumulated net advantage, of course.
Yes, I'm that much a Clausewitzian.

Some readers may be tempted to think that all this is trivial; it isn't. It's helpful to look at war this way.

For example, activity that in itself has a poor record (such as reconnaissance with high attrition) can be fine, even necessary. This is part of the reason why a truly attritionist mindset is very problematic. Such a mindset would usually label such activity as wrong.

So basically this post addresses the decades-old anglophone debate between 'maneuver'-oriented and 'attrition'-oriented schools of military theory. That distinction is simply not as helpful as the distinction between "accumulating a net advantage" and "realising the net advantage". This addresses only those people who aren't overburdened by 4-word titles instead of 1-word ones, of course.

Just in case of doubt; my two concepts are of course not phases with a discrete succession. They do overlap each other. They're constructs to help a more clear and more purpose-focused thinking about military art and theory.

S Ortmann

P.S.: I'd be proud if I could say that I developed this clarity of thought (which I think it is) before skirmish and scouting tactics caught my major interest. Sadly, it was the other, not-so-methodological, way around. First I formulated my skirmish theory (largely unpublished), then I formulated this text in support of it.

What is a "battle" - what is not?

2011-10-23T00:01:00.012+02:00

(This post is a preparation for the following one.)

The English word "battle" is nowadays more ambiguous than the German word "Schlacht". It's also in a much more inflationary use.

I found it useful to not call fights of all kinds and all scopes "battle". Such an ambiguous use of the word clouds the view for what's important (in the next post).

It's about as annoying to me as the typical description of a lone AK shooter as "sniper" just because he didn't shoot at stone-throwing range and his position is unclear.

Die Alexanderschlacht; oil painting of Albrecht Altdorfer, 1529

For example, it would be a mis-use of the word "Schlacht" to call an assault on a platoon-sized outpost a "Schlacht". That word is reserved for much bigger fights; as a rule of thumb I wouldn't call anything smaller than a division on division engagement a "Schlacht". Meanwhile, it seems to be common practice to call almost ever fire-fight "battle" nowadays - as well as many entirely non-military actions that don't even necessarily include opposing parties.
I've been told that this inflationary use of the word "battle" only began by the time of the Vietnam War.

As a contrast, even many corps vs. corps contacts of WW2 weren't even mentioned in daily reports of the German supreme command, much less named as "battles" with their name. I got to admit that Germans coined a dedicated word for the really, really big world war battles in order to differentiate them from more normal battles; "Großkampf" (great fight).

A platoon vs. battalion-sized engagement would be - especially in a great war context- nothing bigger than a reconnaissance (if the platoon is moving) or a practice assault for a green battalion.

The attention on small wars during the last years has done us a disservice and clouded our mind. It helps to have a clear linguistic differentiation between a real battle and a small contact between hostile parties that merely gets equal attention as a battle would (for lack of a real battle).

I cannot redefine a language that changed over time, but I wanted to point out that it's important to keep the difference between a small exchange of fire and a real battle in mind. Clarity of language is important for clarity of thought.

S Ortmann

P.S.: The German word "Schlacht" (battle) is a close relative of "schlachten" (slaughtering).

Website recommendation: "Napoleon, His Army and Enemies"

2011-10-22T22:29:00.000+02:00

I can heartily recommend this great website, for it's a huge and great and just splendid website about the major European armies of the Age of Napoleon.

Napoleon, His Army and Enemies

The "Strategy and Tactic" section is outstanding!

S Ortmann

An article about artillery

2011-10-19T19:41:00.005+02:00

Typical articles about artillery in professional journals look like

Artillery [blah] 21st century [blah] transformation [blah] lethality [blah] network [blah] leap ahead [blah] revolutionary [blah] effects [blah] efficiency [blah] joint [blah] system of systems [blah] excellence !

I stopped reading such articles years ago.

Their illustrations are often neat, but the content of truth or even actual information is 'moderate'. Moreover, often it's important what's not being written (for example that the shiny new gun is already out-ranged by foreign substitutes or that the bureaucracy plans to buy only a small supply of the new ammunition). Ongoing programs are usually being hyped - up to the day when they're being cancelled. Afterwards there's perfect silence about them and whatever is the next move of the bureaucracy is going to be hyped as super-wise.

In short: Most professional journal articles about artillery (or most other military topics) are pretty much an insult to the reader's intelligence.

Luckily, this blog is not professional journal, so I can dare to write an article about artillery without being ashamed.

The essential component of an article about artillery: Mil porn!

Earlier blog posts about artillery looked at hardware examples, sub-sets or specific conditions for effectiveness or other specifics:

2011-09: A "15 years too late" analysis on precision munitions and survivability

2011-08: The underrated genius gun

2011-01: A German artillery fire control computer in '45?

2010-08: "Who Says Dumb Artillery Rounds Can’t Kill Armor?"

2010-04: A little bit German artillery and anti-tank defence history

2009-11: The future of multiple rocket launchers

2009-09: On defensive firepower and much else...

2009-05: DM 121 purchase / modern artillery

2009-04: C-RAM

2008-11: Cluster munitions ban

2008-07: Mortars and howitzers

This time I'll try to write about the grand picture, of all artillery since the 20th century. It will also be somewhat applicable to other indirect fire arms (such as mortars).

The purpose of the artillery is to influence a land campaign advantageously by achieving effects. through fires (and the threat). These effects were exclusively destructive / lethal / repulsing a long time ago, but jobs such as illumination, smoke screening, disruption, radio jamming were added during the 20th century.

The effects are the centre of attention (or should be), for they are the justification for the effort.

Old photos about arty can be interesting, too...

It's thus interesting to create a list of what influences artillery effectiveness (in a somewhat abstract way). This is the area where public discussions of artillery are especially narrowed-down and dumbed-down. My attempt to create such a list follows:

Artillery hardware-dominated factors

(1) Ammunition quantity (including the availability of ammunition to the firing unit, not just in national depots!)

(2) Ammunition quality (type and quality of warhead/cargo, quantity of sub-munitions, including fuse type)

(3) Duration of munition flight (relevant against moving targets)

(4) Angle of descent (important for unitary fragmentation munitions and in hilly/mountainous terrain)

(5) Reliability of guidance / trajectory correction and fusing (inclusive ECCM)

(6) Vulnerability of ammunition to hard kill countermeasures (C-RAM)

(7) Fuse setting in use (timed, proximity, super quick, quick, delay, mine fuse?).

(8) Quality of ammunition storage (especially for certain white phosphorous rounds) and ammunition age / shelf life.

(9) Fires observability (radar cross section or smoke trail of munition in flight, flash, noise, smoke, trajectory height, manoeuvring munition?)

(10) Resistance of artillery to non-fires influences (EMP, deep sub-zero temperatures, moisture, heat)

(11) Dispersion of impacts (usually an elliptical pattern, not a simple circle - thus a difference between longitudinal and lateral dispersion)

Other artillery factors

(12) Reliability of artillery personnel (morale, accidents and errors, willingness to fire when civilians are present)

(13) Close security (360°) concerns

(14) Survivability of artillery against dedicated anti-arty measures (camouflage, concealment, deception, hardening, redundancy, mobility, tactics)

(15) Readiness of artillery (On the march? Shoot and scoot? Double crews? In range? Fuelled? Supply times? In need of repairs? Suitable trajectory when mountains are present? Suitable direction (in light of different safety distance requirements for longitudinal and lateral dispersion)? Artillery in a self-defence fight? Authorised/actual strength?)

(16) Accuracy of impacts (or of projected impacts if rounds become effective prior to impact; correct calculation with correct input variables including ammunition characteristics, barrel wear, temperature, altitudes, coordinates, meteorological date and more)

Communication and command

(17) Delay (lag) between arrival of request/command and fires (calculation, checks, deconfliction, loading, aiming weapons, communication between calculating and firing small unit)

(18) Resource allocation (Centralised decision-making? Schwerpunkt?)

(19) Reliability of communication (line of sight, range, clarity, inter-lingua, ECCM)

(20) Delay (lag) of communication (speed of transmission, queuing of messages, procedures)

(21) Timing of fires requests / commands (tactical timing, not = lag!)

Related to observation of the enemy

(22) Accuracy of observation (own and relative position)

(23) Reliability of observation (IFF, recognition of decoys, night and bad weather performance)

(24) Lag of observation (non-digital aerial reconnaissance, acoustic sensors)

Target (area)-related factors

(25) Susceptibility to soft-kill countermeasure reactions (timely warning, taking cover or evading, deploying smoke/chaff/dazzler/decoys against target-seeking munitions)

(26) Surprise factor

(27) Surface quality (Deep snow? High trees?)

and a big one:

(28) Nature of the target (dispersion, cover, hardening, morale, proximity to "blue" troops, size, movement, importance, vulnerability to secondary effects such as secondary fires or explosions, ability to make identification more difficult, exploitation of red cross or protected sites etc)

I suspect the primary utility of such mil porn pictures is to keep readers motivated.

Having thought about this for a while, I'd like to make three comments and leave all else to the reader and later blog posts:

(a) The challenges are much greater and much more diverse than the mere shopping of some fancy precision munitions or new guns. I hope none of my readers will be ever tricked by marketing hype about a supposed silver bullet (again)!

(b) The actual effect is much, much smaller than the potential effect because no force comes close to mastering the first 24 points. An incomplete understanding of these influences leads to a wrong estimation of artillery's actual effectiveness and the relative importance of specific influence factors.

(c) Wouldn't it be great if sometime in the near future we'd be able to read an article about artillery in a professional journal in which the officer-author writes about the artillery of his army and uses a list such as this one as a check list, commenting on every point briefly? I mean, instead of a buzzword mash-up?

S Ortmann

P.S.: Word count for buzzwords: 4 x "effects" and once "tactical" (in some contexts that would be a buzzword) in my 'article'. All uses seem justified to me, for they're being applied with the original meaning.

I do sometimes ask others to preview and comment/correct my texts. This time I'm thankful for preview comments by the SWC members "Xenophon" and "GMLRS".

A history of the infantry gun in the U.S. (and elsewhere)

2011-10-19T00:01:00.016+02:00

The German army/armies improvised the concept of an infantry gun for knocking out pockets of resistance that survived artillery preparations. I wrote about that in an earlier post. The French did something similar, and eventually many countries employed relatively light guns for such purposes during the Inter-war Years.

Anti-tank guns, mountain guns and even light field cannons were imperfect substitutes for dedicated infantry guns in the direct fire role and Brandt-pattern mortars were imperfect substitutes for infantry guns in the indirect fire roles. So in theory, you could make do without infantry guns - and infantry guns were squeezed considerably by such competition.

The U.S. Army was a bit slow to catch up with the whole concept and was especially interested in the indirect fire role, as it seems. Its quite belated adoption became known as 105 mm howitzer M3.

In 1941, the US Arm requested a 105 mm howitzer suitable for carriage by air, and as a rough guideline, a weight of 2,500lb and a range of no less than 7,000 yards were stipulated. In response, the M2A1 howitzer was cut down in length by 27 inches, to become the Howitzer T7. The carriage of the 75 mm Howitzer M3A1 was adopted as a Carriage T6, and the recoil mechanism of the 75 mm Pack Howitzer, much modified, became the Recoil Mechanism 105 mm Howitzer T13. Surprisingly, when it was all put together it worked quite well and required very little further modification, and the design was standardized as the Howitzer M3 on Carriage M3 in February 1943. Trials of production models revealed a lack of strength of the carriage, so those converted from 75 mm matériel remained the M3, while a newly-manufactured design, with thicker metal in the trial, became the M3A1. [...] 2,580 were built [...].

(Ian V. Hogg "British and American Artillery of World War Two", 1978)

105 mm M3 Howitzer in action, WW2

These guns - eventually used as a kind of medium infantry gun since there weren't even remotely enough airborne troops to make use of such a production run, were a moderate success. The Army didn't exactly fall in love with them. U.S.Army field artillery of the time was a huge fan of multi-battalion "time on target" fire missions that united the firepower of many batteries, while infantry guns lack the range to be available for this and are inherently rather point target destruction tools for commanders below division level (that would be battalion or "Combat Command" a.k.a. brigade in the WW2 U.S.Army).

There was a lot of competition as well. Mortars, recoilless guns, bazookas, artillery, on-call fighter bombers and most of all a huge quantity of Sherman tanks in direct cooperation with infantry.

There's also the possibility that the U.S.Army knew about infantry guns, but didn't understand them.

- - - - -

You might think that this was the end of the American infantry gun story, but there's a funny twist. One hand didn't exactly understand what the other did, and the Marines re-invented the wheel. The M3 Howitzer was - as the quote showed - a 105 mm howitzer (rifled barrel) on a modified 75 mm pack howitzer (=mountain gun) carriage.

The Marines - being Marines and all, but most importantly different - had post-war the glorious idea that their 4.2" mortar could be mounted on a carriage. A modified 75 mm pack howitzer carriage. Yeah, THAT 75 mm pack howitzer carriage.

4.2" M30 mortar in action in Korea, 1952

Well, the 4.2" mortar was an unusual one - it had rifling just like a howitzer. Most mortars have smooth-bore barrels.

Let's see - 4.2", what's that in millimetre? 107 mm. Interesting.
What was its range? 7,400 yards as a mortar.

Well, that's only a coincidence! ;)

The Marines being Marines and innovative and all did some PR. They didn't call this bastard gun a howitzer. No, they called it M98 Howtar ("Howtar" being an unofficial designation).

Ain't that funny?

(The Marines became actually innovative afterwards, but that was not exactly a success.)

- - - - -

Meanwhile (or actually slightly after the M3 Howitzer), German engineers thought hard about an improvement of the infantry gun idea. they, too, combined mortar-ish hardware with a gun-ish carriage.

They had the idea for the High-Low pressure system in which the propellant has first some volume for expansion (into a lower pressure state) before the projectile begins to move earnestly. This allowed for a much lighter 8but longer) barrel and a lighter carriage.

Everything had to be done in great haste, so the projectile of a 81.4 mm mortar and the carriage of the semi-obsolete 50 mm anti-tank gun were married with (afaik) the muzzle brake of a 75 mm anti-tank gun and, well, what else a gun needs. There was a shaped charge version of the shell and some experimentation with a purpose-built very light carriage, too.

8 cm PAW 600 a.k.a. PWK 8H63, true calibre: 81.4 mm (smoothbore)

That gun did not have a great maximum barrel elevation (only 32°), but it combined light infantry gun weight, reasonable effective range and penetration in the important anti-tank role and a reasonable performance in the indirect fire role (out-ranging the common 81.4 mm mortar by much and being about on par with the other regimental indirect fire asset, the new 120 mm mortar).

It's still amazing that it was a quite accurate weapon despite launching a subsonic mortar bomb's shape with a muzzle velocity of 520 m/s (about Mach 1.5).

The USMC re-invented the Army's M3 Howitzer / medium infantry gun, but the Bundeswehr failed to get the high-low pressure guns (there was also a 100 mm model), too. Instead, recoilless guns were in fashion during the mid-50's (moderately practical, but even cheaper than a high-low pressure gun!) and later on there were the first generation anti-tank guided missiles that finally evolved into practical munitions.

Those were in turn replaced by second-generation anti-tank missiles which were more practical, but with a distinct survivability drawback.

Now guess what was fired in anger against Argentine field bunkers in 1982 during the re-conquest of the Falklands, in best WW1 infantry gun fashion ...

Btw, those 2nd generation ATGMs (with typical SACLOS guidance) were in turn replaced elsewhere with more modern ones, and ~~Hamas~~ Hezbollah used those against Israelis troops pinned in buildings during the 2006 Lebanon War.

The infantry gun meme keeps bouncing back.

S Ortmann

Some good stuff from other blogs

2011-10-18T00:01:00.006+02:00

.
...after complaining about them in general.

"No wonder we need a $700 billion defense budget: some of us are planning strike operations at the hint of an anti-American plan."

http://tachesdhuile.blogspot.com/

"Why I Published US Intelligence Secrets About Israel's Anti-Iran Campaign"

http://www.truth-out.org/why-i-published-us-intelligence-secrets-about-israels-anti-iran-campaign/1316550301

"Which begs the question: What, exactly, is the purpose of ISAF reports in the first place? Is ISAF seriously going on record to say that the data that they are making public cannot be relied upon? If analysts cannot build arguments out of the “basic, factual information” that ISAF is providing, why provide it at all?"

http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2011/10/isaf-says-dont-quote-me-bro/

"Die de facto unabhängige Region Somaliland schafft es auf erstaunliche Weise, relative Sicherheit und Stabilität zu gewährleisten. Und doch wird der Enklave auch nach ihrem 20-jährigen Bestehen die Abspaltung von Somalia verwehrt."

http://www.zenithonline.de/deutsch/politik//artikel/das-ignorierte-erfolgsmodell-somaliland-002261/

A rule of thumb for the allocation of specialist support

2011-10-17T14:16:00.001+02:00

About ~~long-range~~ long-radius specialist support assets (such as helicopters, artillery, engineers, maybe scouts) in general: A rule of thumb (of mine) is:

Long-radius specialist support assets should as a rule of thumb be assigned to a level of command that has approximately the radius of (short-term, ~24 hrs) responsibility / operations as the asset has radius of effect (very short term, minutes to 4 hours).

I developed this as a my rule of thumb (or rather as a description of the common ground of my opinions on different force designs) a while ago and mentioned it indirectly in earlier posts. The reasoning behind this is mostly about efficiency. Longer range assets than needed (say, 80 km artillery instead of 13 km mortars when you need 8 km radius) are more costly and thus often wasted at lower levels. It's on the other hand not convincing to give a formation commander an asset that doesn't enable him to relocate his main effort quickly (which is big chunk of his job, after all) because of its lack of effective radius.

There are complicating considerations that have to be taken into account as well, of course. Horizontal support doctrine, Schwerpunkt idea in a slow-moving campaign, speed of assets (scouts, for example) and many other considerations play into this.
Thus it's only a rule of thumb. I justify the elevated position for the radius variable over the other considerations with my assumption (observation) that it appears to be the dominant factor most of the time.

- - - - -

Now let's move over to a specific application (I mentioned this one in an earlier post as well): Helicopters as brigade or division assets. This is particularly popular with U.S.Americans and in small war contexts, but rarely if ever being mentioned in other contexts. Helicopters as division assets has been the dominant pattern in the U.S.Army for a long time (+ helicopters in armoured cavalry regiments ~ brigades, helicopters in marine expeditionary units ~ very small brigades).

The radius of effect of a helicopter unit is in excess of 100 km and thus much greater than the short-term area of operations of a brigade. A brigade may occasionally move 100 km over night, but something goes awfully wrong if its elements are in combat 100 km away from its temporary helicopter base.

What's more to be considered?

Helicopters are fuel hogs while armour, mech and even infantry brigades are manoeuvre formations (heavy divisions too). The combination of both looks quite wrong if you take into account that the mere supply of a moving brigade for its ground element's essential supply needs is already a logistical problem of the highest quality (and rarely mastered for long).

The fiscal cost of helicopters may contribute to them being an inefficient aerial support asset in comparison to alternatives, such as aerial recce drones and guided indirect fire munitions.

U.S. ground forces are the greatest proponents of a strong use of helicopters in regiments, brigades and divisions. They have been much-influenced by the Vietnam experience, a de facto ban for fixed wing aircraft in the U.S.Army and the assumption of air supremacy and effective suppression of enemy air defences.

They are quite specific and alone in this regard, which can be taken as an inspiration to think about whether their conclusions are correct and generally valid (which would mean that dozens of other modern armies were wrong about it).

The availability of helicopter support far forward (= in a brigade combat area) may be marginal due to hostile air defences. If in effect, this might turn the organic helicopter support into deadweight.

Helicopter support may be somewhat similar to other organic support (a subsittute). This resembles the 'UAV' point above. "KISS - keep it simple, stupid!" and the concept of friction in war (v.Clausewitz) appear to suggest that such redundancies may at times be a mistake.

An organic helicopter force impact the march agility of the brigade. The additional vehicles add to column length and duration of passing of a bde convoy. The responsiveness to a march order may be poor because of helicopters still away or not in flyable condition.

Centralisation vs. decentralisation. Different armies have different preferences here, for good reasons. The responsibeness to a formation's support needs is better with organic assets, but having them organic reduces their availability for large operational-level actions. Decentralisation also reduces the efficiency of the dedicated support (~more aircraft mechanics needed for same qty of helos).

The temporary helicopter base in a brigade's area would be in range of (much) hostile artillery and even of hostile air surveillance. This would be the foundation for a high exposure to artillery fire on the base, which is unlikely if the base was more centralised with the corps, for example.

Finally, there are usually* alternative levels for the allocation of helicopter support assets at available:

# division

# corps

# theatre / Armee

I prefer the corps level, for modern corps would have a radius of short-term responsibility that matches about the (practical, ~90% of missions) radius of effect of helicopters.

(*: Marines and forces in small wars being an exception at times.)

- - - - -

Similar considerations can be applied especially to artillery support, which appear to have advanced in range even more than the (linear) growth of the area of responsibility / operations of formations did.

My approach can be contrasted with the (let me call it) "wish list" approach of some others who at times appear like spoiled children in their expectation of near-unlimited resources no matter what costs. The agility- and logistics-related points even show that having more does not necessarily equal being better off.

Armies have a responsibility to serve their people, but they have also a responsibility to avoid waste. This means they need to allocate resources rationally, not the least because this habit is important for great wars when practically all resources become very scarce.

S Ortmann

P.S.: I apologise if anyone finds my texts difficult to read because I cut them down to the bones without much explanation. I take much as self-evident and attempt to keep blog posts at a bearable length and thus omit some explanations.

Depressed

2011-10-14T22:07:00.001+02:00

An hour ago, I activated dozens on of bookmarks in Firefox to sweep over all bookmarked Milblogs. Then I proceeded with reading ... and now I'm kinda depressed.

To state it nicely, I feel alone with my idea of a Milblog.

I feel also quite alone in my appraisal of the costs of war, and my subsequent rejection of most wars and 'opportunities' for war as net harmful to all communities involved.

There are two explanations;

(a) I'm wrong.

(b) The Milblogosphere is quite terrible.

Neither is charming.

S Ortmann
.

Analog-mechanical computers

2011-10-11T16:31:00.001+02:00

If you were ever curious about the technological level of World War 2...

That was slightly below cutting edge back in '45; tube-based electric computer did exist, but were apparently not preferred for the harsh conditions on a warship.

S Ortmann

"War is a racket" (Repeat)

2011-10-06T00:01:00.007+02:00

"War is a racket" by Major General Smedley D. Butler is an antiwar classic by a highly decorated U.S. Marine Cops officer. There's still a USMC base in Japan named for this officer.

One quote of this remarkable officer sums his experience up, but isn't from his "War is a racket" text itself:

MG Smedley D. Butler, USMC, 1920's
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.

The horrors of war, the unjustified profits of the war industry, the suffering at home, mutilated soldiers and especially his experience in many needless and corrupt small wars convinced MG Butler that war is a racket, evil. I read his book twice in the past years, and it's obviously applicable to our time as well as to the early and late 20th century.

He judged by his personal experience of his lifetime - the "Great War" and many small interventions against sovereign nations in Latin America.

He wrote "War is a racket" in 1935, in hindsight probably one of the worst times ever if you want to have lasting impact and fame for an anti-war work . The axis powers didn't allow peace for long any more (he warned only about Italy in his book) and showed that there are two kinds of war; those you can avoid and those you cannot avoid without submission.

This distinction is very important if we try to apply lessons learned from history for a better future.
Patriotism is a good thing if used to mobilize for unavoidable wars, and it's evil if it's exploited to reinforce support for needless wars.
Furthermore, the arguments of pacifists should not be dismissed completely, but considered for each and every war in detail - they apply to some wars and not so much to others.

Not only the understanding of patriotism should be influenced by past experiences - the whole approach to war needs to be checked. Are our societies really prepared to repel attempts to lure us into needless small or major wars in the future? Or will we fall prey to such attempts as the British did in 2003, when their head of government was able to participate in a war that the majority of the British didn't even want and that became a disaster?

S Ortmann

P.S.: This is a modified and abridged repeat of a four year old post of mine. I think it deserved this repeat. After all, almost nobody read this blog four years ago any way.;)

National security policy the rational way (a partial view)

2011-10-04T21:24:00.001+02:00

I laid out in my previous blog post that the military has different political purposes in wartime and peacetime. That's quite self-evident, but also important.

The political purpose of armed forces in peacetime should be to impress potential aggressors, to add a risk premium to whatever aggression might be contemplated against the country. The risk of excessive costs or outright failure of any aggression shall reduce the probability of war (deterrence).

This requires an impressive military; impressive in the eyes of politicians and the public.

The classic Cold War metrics for military power were combat aircraft, tanks, artillery pieces, divisions, nuclear warheads. The published matchups were really that simplistic (NAT-internal documents referred to "heavy division equivalents" instead - not much better). Nobody discussed in a newspaper whether the infantry of a nation was well-versed in nightly infiltration attacks.

This superficial part of military power must not be exaggerated, though. It might pervert its national security purpose if you had too much of it. Too much overt military strength may provoke an arms race. Arms races are counterproductive because they cost much in peacetime and lead to a greater net damage in wartime.

It's even worse; one or more parties of an arms race might go beyond a sustainable spending level (resulting in a lack of national capital investments, lack of system-stabilising consumption or a tradebalance deficit). This is not only wasteful, but might even lead to war. One such overextended racer might be tempted to seek an exit in actual war, rather than to admit arms race defeat (= risky loss of deterrence) or even a system collapse.

The importance of the obvious during peacetime leads to an emphasis on the obvious (high-profile hardware, quantity) during peacetime. The matchups show combat aircraft, not the annual flying hours of their pilots, after all.

- - - - -

It's all different during wartime:

During wartime the armed forces should be capable enough to achieve a low net damage outcome. It shall get the country out of the mess that is war, back to constructive peace instead of destructive war. The age of net profit wars is gone, nowadays only a tiny minority can benefit from war.

Yesterday I wrote "minimal net damage" instead of "low net damage", and this is correct if you look at the wartime period only. A national security strategy needs to consider that such minimal net damage would be bought with increased effort (= costs, damage to prosperity) in peacetime. A country with some confidence in its ability to keep the peace would accept a trade-off (with low peacetime expenses at somewhat increased expectation value for wartime damages). Such a compromise might look cynical to the reader, but think of the savings being invested in curing otherwise terminally ill people. A world of scarce resources (such as ours) requires some seemingly cynical trade-offs.

Anyway, the wartime demand for actual capability instead of show-off puts an emphasis on the quality of the personnel and generally 'hidden' qualities of the armed forces.

It's noteworthy that this requires some preparation during peacetime as well, and accordingly no national defence strategy that rests on national armed forces must neglect the nurturing of 'hidden' qualities.

This is where the competence of press, public and politicians as well as the influence of lobbyists (even from inside the armed forces) may be to blame for a suboptimal defence policy in just about every country.

By the way; I don't spot much of a semblance between this and actual national security policies of today. Do you?

S Ortmann
.

Some really, really basic things about national security

2011-10-03T21:36:00.004+02:00

I got into a kind of ranting mode when confronted with a specific opinion on a forum. The discussion was about whether it's acceptable to wish that a country's officer corps is combat-experienced. My point was that this requires involvement in warfare and is thus only achievable under condition of a failure of national security policy, resulting in the conclusion that combat experience is logically not desirable if you look at the whole.

Another forum member intervened with this helpful remark

It wasn't long ago I asked you what a military should do (other than attain victory). You responded with me earning a load of disrespect (but yet, never answered my question).

I don't remember the specific instance, but his description may nevertheless be correct. I'm at times "abrasive" when I'm "appalled" by a behaviour or opinion.

Anyway, here's an excerpt of my reply. I think it's decent blog material, too:

Victory as commonly defined is often a form of failure. The harm done to the own country by warfare is often greater than the harm done by not going to war (if there's any of the latter at all).
(The foolishness of the 2003-2011 Iraq conflict is a good example: pretty much nothing was gained but the busting of a few stupid fantasies. Thousands died, ten thousands were crippled, trillions of dollars were spent - for no real gain.)

The military shall -in the event of war- achieve the minimal net damage outcome for the country, with political efforts to the same end in parallel.

The mission for the government as a whole is to avoid damage altogether, to maximise the benefits of the population. The details are tricky from a philosophical point of view, but it's quite obvious that in our age you cannot really be better off with "winning" a war of choice than choosing not to go to it. You don't get to annex fertile lands or gold mines any more these days, not even oil fields.

This leaves wars of necessity, which again are only meeting the criteria if they're the least terrible alternative. To choose a more terrible alternative than a less terrible one is folly/incompetence, thus you gotta choose the least terrible (again, determining this is tricky detail stuff). Obviously, if the least terrible alternative is the only one that should be used, war can only be the way to go if it's the least terrible way to go.

After all, war is a terrible alternative, thus it's in the context "of war or not war" pointless to cover the "most beneficial" line of argument that applies to many peacetime policy outcomes.

So what's the military's purpose in peacetime?
Support the policy in its quest for good outcomes by making war and sovereignty violations less likely. This can be pursued by putting a hefty risk premium on all foreign aggressions. This risk premium is the visible and widely known probability that an aggression would fail to overcome the resistance (at costs that appear to be acceptable to the aggressor's top decisionmakers).

Thus I finally found an answer to my question what to post on this blog today. I've got some draft texts too, but it seems there's a reason why I didn't hit the "publish" button on them yet.

About war and peace (which, btw, is a label here on this blog!):

People in uniform, people in war ministries (whatever their name nowadays is) and people with a focus on the military (or even its hardware) drown out the voices of philosophy, reason and diplomacy in regard to national security debates.

It's a shame. More brain less guns could have kept many conflicts cold, millions of people alive, entire nations intact.

There may not be enough people out there who can detach from emotions and silly ideas and think rationally about war and peace when needed, but that's no excuse for not accepting that rationality is the way to go.

S Ortmann
.

Functions in military theory / front lines

2011-10-02T00:03:00.001+02:00

I have written about different functions in military stuff over the course of this blog.

I wrote about repulsion and how having a long range may actually reduce the functional utility of a weapon (even ceteris paribus).

I referred often to the functions of a front line, which fell away when armies gave up the idea of establishing a front line.

Recently I wrote about how you could create the effects of encirclement by meeting the function of an encirclement without actually make it look like an encirclement.

Unsurprisingly, I think there's some merit in this way of looking at military theory.

The technical capability of weapons and the physical capability of soldiers very rarely coincides with what happens in real warfare. A main battle tank may be able to aim, shoot and hit while driving at 60 km/h speed, but that's not how tank combat really looks like.

A missile may be developed to destroy a radar station - and end up merely forcing the radar operators to switch their radar off for a few seconds.

An assault rifle may have the technical capability to slaughter a whole platoon in a minute, but that doesn't happen.

The difference between input potential and actual outcome isn't the only indicator for the importance of function, though. Actions have usually effects that are not obvious at all. Many actions serve a purpose, a function in war.

The difference between potential and actual result is the really important thing. We need to understand the functions that rule warfare, more so than the tools. A look at the tools is too deceiving, for it merely reveals the potential, not the actual effect.

- - - - -

Let's finally look in detail at one of the functions that interest me very much, for I see no substitute in place after its loss yet: The front line.

What does a front line do?

Basically it keeps weak forces from advancing much. A proper front line may be infiltrated, but the risk/price is usually high. It can be penetrated by an offensive (under some circumstances), but it cannot be overwhelmed by a general advance along most of its length.

It does thus keep the enemy largely from advancing and thus creates security in the rear. This in turn enhances the efficiency of forces in the rear, for they can train, repair and move supplies without needing to pull much local 360° security. Of course, they also sleep better. Sleep deprivation is a big issue in wartime.

Front lines have a geometrical reason for their (past) existence.
Back in the 18th and even 19th century artillery wasn't long-ranged. It was feasible to protect a town against fires with a fortified ring around it. The longer the artillery ranges became, the greater the necessary diameter of the fortifications. This in turn led to an ever longer circumference (2 *

π

* radius)- up to the point when it became pointless to allocate so many defenders to a single town. In some places the defensive rings of multiple towns came in contact and it was less inefficient to give them a joint defence.


expanding fortifications lines of Cologne, 4th century to 1877, (c) D. Herdemerten

By the late 19th century it was obvious that town fortifications were pointless. To fortify the border of a state was an alternative. The geometrical reason is simple. Imagine a large circle and now fill it up with dozens fo small circles. The large circle surrounds more area than the sum of the small ones, but its circumference is much smaller than the sum of theirs.

The increased lethality of small arms (= less defenders needed per length) and the mass mobilisation of troops with conscription actually enabled the fortification of an uninterrupted front line from Switzerland to the North Sea in late 1914 (as predicted by Bloch). The same was never fully possible on the Russian front in the First World War, but there was still a front line: The function of a front line was met with less ambition than total resistance against offensives.

The probably weakest form of front line came into being in World War Two, again on the vast Eastern Front; the weakened Wehrmacht wasn't able to fully man a front line, thus it had to create its effects with very few resources.

It was mostly a strong point defence with connecting trenches for patrol and surveillance purposes. Indirect fires (especially artillery and mortars) dominated the observed ground without much small arms fire. Again, it was possible to infiltrate, but infiltrations were met by counter-attacks. The less troops with direct fire weapons man a front line, the more they need to be substituted for with indirect fires. A continuous trench line was desirable for the safety of patrolling, but it was no longer always an integral component as in 1916.

The key for such a front line was to force the superior opponent to concentrate forces for an overwhelming breakthrough offensive. The rear troops were quite secure till this breakthrough occurred, and there were operational counters even to successful breakthroughs. A front line can meet its function even if it's unable to stop the enemy.

Nowadays it's unlikely that traditional, continuous front lines will be established in a conventional war. There are likely too few troops. This has actually been correct since the early Cold War, but the fixation on nukes kept many from seeing it.

- - - - -

The essential components of defence: Direct fires - counterattacks - indirect fires - surveillance.

The less forces per length, the more emphasis has to be shifted away from direct fires. Artillery fires are the classic gap-filler for thin defences.

Modern forces couldn't have short range direct fires along the length of a front line.

Their surveillance of a long line is also in doubt because of weak scout and infantry components (contrary to the sensors fashion). Indirect fires are now high quality, but low quantity (and accurate indirect fires against moving targets are still difficult).

Could all this be made up for with counter-attacks? Hardly.

You need a substitute for the discouraging effect of an established front line, or else your opposing force may put you into extremely risky and disadvantageous situations by exploiting much of its mobility potential. There's no front line that forces them to concentrate for hours or days for a predictable push, after all. They might appear just about everywhere, at any time.

I actually gave away parts of my idea for a substitute in earlier posts. My working title is "skirmish corridor".

I won't describe it in detail here because the point of most of my blog posts isn't to inject my ideas into readers' brains; it's to inspire their thought. A single brain rarely produces great ideas, but a thinking society will succeed. Well, that and the text is already long enough.

S O

A "15 years too late" analysis on precision munitions and survivability

2011-09-28T19:16:00.001+02:00

Precision munitions and smart munitions were the big hype of the 90's, but obviously I didn't blog during the 90's. Nor did I have particularly well-founded views on them back in the 90's. So pardon me for coming late to the party, please.

First some context, for no analysis should be done with an empty stomach:

Back in the World War Two era, the best defensive practice on flat land (against an enemy who preferred night attacks) was to have a forward line of own troops (FLOT, VRV - Vorderer Rand der Verteidigung) as a screen for the main daylight defensive positions (1). This forward screen was made up of small teams in ambush/observation positions or on patrol. Such far forward troops were naturally exposed to detection, no matter how well they camouflaged and concealed themselves. Sooner or later they were spotted.

The main nighttime defensive positions in turn were behind the daylight ones, in an attempt to screen the former with the latter against detection even in the event of an enemy offensive.

An enemy with a preference for daylight attack on the other hand would not have required a differentiation between daylight and nighttime positions. Troops would stay in the more forward ones until strong artillery fire is expected, which they could sit out in the more rear alternative positions if leaders got the timing right.

In short: The more important position was to be screened against detection by a more expendable position. This led to a surprise advantage for the defender in major defensive battles and added uncertainty for the attacker in general.

- - - - -

Long-time readers of this blog do probably remember that I advocate camouflage and concealment all the time, period. Even small exposure is in my opinion acceptable only for very short duration (about 2 minutes).

That's of course a judgement result, not the reasoning itself.

To prove that I'm correct I would need to prove that even the aforementioned forward screen could not expose itself nowadays without unacceptable attrition rates or mission failures.

The relation of overall lethality of fires (most notably indirect fires, = rocket, howitzers and mortars) is the key. It has to be worse (=more lethal to the defender) today than back in WW2 to yield worse (for the defender) results. This lethality has to be seen in context of target quantity if you look at the macro scale (this relation isn't so important on the tactical level).

WW2:

Many high explosive warheads x low probability of hit Ph.(2)

Fires usually had to be 'walked in' on the target, spending the surprise effect.(3)

2011:

Few high explosive warheads x high probability of hit

Fires can be very accurate on first salvo.

Now the question is whether

much HE x low Ph

is smaller, equal or bigger

few HE x high Ph

"smaller":

This would mean that accuracy (surprise) is the key advance, while firepower overall has decreased.

"equal":

This would mean that accuracy (surprise) is the key advance, while firepower overall is the same.

"bigger":

This would mean that dispersion and accuracy (surprise) advances are overmatching the loss of ammunitions quantity.

The "smaller" and "equal" cases would -if true- allow the conclusion that precision munitions are not so much important as is the accuracy (knowledge of positions, environment and trajectory, correct calculation). You could -in this simplistic model- have the same effect with lots of dumb rounds being fired by good gunners and good guns.

The "bigger" case (which is widely implied or asserted to be true in publications) would suggest that the hype about the small dispersion of precision munitions (small circular error probability, CEP) was correct.

Well, what's the overall lethality that I meant?

'Shells' times quality of dispersion (less dispersion = better quality) is the measure against targets which don't evade fires when possible.

Against targets which do evade incoming fires you need to magnify the effects a lot to represent today's situation, for modern fires take immediate effect and leave no time for running to a secondary position.

- - - - -

I may not have made myself clear about this in previous texts (can only point out so much at once). The dispersion is in my opinion important, but not in itself the reason why modern ground forces need to break contact after a short time to prevent getting caught by support fires. They need to do so because you cannot run away from modern mortar or artillery fires.

That's why I have my conclusions about the role of modern support (indirect) fires, even without being able to solve the high explosives x dispersion equation (which is extremely complicated if you want to do it thoroughly) even though publications focus usually on one variable of this equation.

By the way; there has been near-constant frustration about the lack of realism in training in regard to indirect fires lethality and thus wrong training and doctrine. This goes back to at least the early 80's in literature. Unsurprisingly, I have yet to see an army manual from any country (I know infantry manuals from eight) that emphasises that unlike in WW2, hostile indirect fires are accurate on first salvo now.

The incompetent harassment mortar teams of Third World insurgents did certainly not help to press this point about modern indirect fires into the minds of our army leaders.

S Ortmann

(1): An approach similar to scouting in general: Jeopardize few in order to buy better security for many. This fundamental approach has mostly been lost to today's Western officer Corps due to their quest for (almost) no KIA on their teams. Such an approach is incompatible with singling out few for high risks, as high risks have (supposedly) to be avoided altogether. Their approach would increase the average risk-taking in a great war.

(2): A measure of dispersion rather than accuracy in this context.Dispersion tells how close the impacts are to each other, while accuracy tells whether the centre of the impacts group was close to the target.

(3): It was possible to avoid this and instead just fire short fire mission with many artillery battalions at once. This shotgun effect came surprisingly and at least some firing batteries were usually on target without corrections. The ammunition expenditure of this tactic permitted it only for large target groups and afaik it was preferred as a defensive fires tactic and not used much for the destruction of defensive positions. The exception was IIRC rocket artillery.

British Labour party considers an attack on the independence of the media

2011-09-27T16:22:00.000+02:00

"Phone hacking fallout:
Labour plans tighter media regulation"

To resist the temptations of authoritarianism is an eternal challenge.

On "I"nitiative

2011-09-24T22:01:00.003+02:00

The concept of "initiative" is a mosaic piece of military theory that has confused many, provoked many discussions - and enabled many men in fancy uniforms to talk much without saying anything.

Discussing the role of "initiative" in military theory was fashionable long before I bothered to blog about anything. This didn't lead to any convincing writing about it reaching my bookdesk, though.

The main point of contention appeared to be (in my eyes) whether "initiative" in itself is valuable or whether it's just randomly associated with both good and bad moves.

Here are some snippets from U.S. doctrine (handy because published in English) about initiative:

When the friendly force has the initiative, it can force the enemy to conduct continuous operations to react to friendly actions and then exploit the effects of continuous operations on the enemy.

Possession of the initiative allows a commander to continually seek vulnerable
spots and shift his decisive operation when opportunities occur.

FM 3-100 actually kind of defines "initiative":

Initiative has both operational and individual components. From an operational perspective, initiative is setting or dictating the terms of action throughout the battle or operation. Initiative implies an offensive
spirit in all operations. To set the terms of battle, commanders eliminate or reduce the number of enemy options. They compel the enemy to conform to friendly operational purposes and tempo [...].

From an individual perspective, initiative is the ability to be a selfstarter, to act when there are no clear instructions or when the situation changes. An individual leader with initiative is willing to decide and initiate independent actions when the concept of operations no longer applies or when an unanticipated opportunity leading to the accomplishment of the commander’s intent presents itself [...].

In the offense, initiative involves throwing the enemy off balance with powerful, unexpected strikes. It implies never allowing the enemy to recover from the initial shock of an attack. [...]

In the defense, initiative implies quickly turning the tables on the attacker. It means taking aggressive action to collect information and force the attacker to reveal his intentions. Defenders aim to negate the attacker’s initial advantages, gain freedom of action, and force the enemy to fight on the defender’s terms. [...]

This much-abbreviated quote shows that the doctrine writers were once again confused.
The deleted parts did in great part reveal that "initiative" serves as a justification for the promotion of "mission-type orders". That's not what interests me here, though.
The same goes for the "individual" aspect of this idea of initiative in which being motivated to fight and thinking independently in conjunction supposedly already equals "initiative". In other words: The U.S.Army used one word for two completely different concepts.

At least a few years back "initiative" was one of the five "tenets" of (U.S.) army operations. The attention on it did go so far to assert that
.

A commander never surrenders the initiative once he gains it.

as if no such thing as the culminating point of attack did ever exist. That shall not be my main focus here, either - no matter how stupid such a generalisation is.

By the way:

FM 3-90 "Tactics" (2001) word search for "initiative": 83 x found

FM 3-100 "Operations" (2001) word search for "initiative": 167 x found

- - - - -

My definition/interpretation what is usually really meant with "having the initiative" in military writings:

The opposing force is so much occupied with coping with your actions and/or threats that he doesn't mobilise the resources to execute major actions that are more than mere reactions. (1)

This may sound eerily familiar to the first quote above, but there's a major difference in my opinion. U.S.doctrine and as a consequence much anglophone writing (thinking?) about initiative in military theory/arts purports that "initiative" is gained by and a benefit of aggressiveness. Gaining "initiative" is supposedly always about the offence. Even in defence, it's about switching back to offensive action.

It's all quite similar to the typical OODA school of thought.

Well, big institutions like that have a certain claim of legitimacy if they define technical terms. I will thus not argue that they got the definition thing wrong (although they should learn to be more concise!).

Instead, I will argue that they got their doctrine wrong.

Read my definition again, please.

*waiting*

Finished? OK.

The key difference is that I do not assert that you need offensive action to gain the Initiative (I will write it with "capital "I" as in German in order to signal that I mean my idea of it).

You may just as well gain the Initiative by overstretching the opponent's resources by the multitude of threats that you pose to him.

Chess players know this. You do not really need to attack in order to paralyse an opponent who's weaker in figures. Sometimes all his figures are totally irreplaceable in his defensive scheme because your many options for attacks require him to defend so much.

A historical example would be El Alamein. Rommel had lost the initiative by failing in his last attack - and no amount of attacking would have helped to regain it. Nor did relentless pressing the previous offensive preserve his initiative. Montgomery had the Initiative because he was strong enough. He decided the time, location and direction of the next offensive - Rommel had no say in this any more after he failed to break through at El Alamein.

An opponent does not only need to cope with your actions, but also with your threats. He must not expose himself so much that you can exploit this much. The more threats he needs to counter with his precautions, the less offensive power is left for major moves of his own.

Judging by what I read and heard about it, this means that your opponent loses the initiative once he can barely cope with all the risks/threats (to him) that you create. This is the paralysis and disadvantage that some doctrines want to achieve through initiative.

U.S.Army doctrine is thus in my opinion not only lacking clarity and concise definitions in regard to "initiative", but is also - and this is a bigger problem in practical application - promoting aggressiveness too much with it.

- - - - -

There's more to it: You can box your enemy into a corner by keeping him totally occupied with your threats, but what happens if he loses hope to counter your threats with defensive posturing?

He may attack like a cornered, wounded predator. There's no point in waiting till one of the unavoidable gaps is being exploited, right? (2)

This is an insight that aforementioned official writings would not create - because they lack the idea that you could gain initiative by anything else than attack.

S Ortmann

(1) : Clarification: You only have the initiative if you still have the reserve resources to stage a substantial offensive effort.
(2) : This kind of explains the 1944 Ardennes Offensive.
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Readiness in mobile warfare

2011-09-23T12:41:00.000+02:00

Some old book contained rules of thumb for meeting engagements and generally the decision for or against an attack directly out of a formation movement.

That wasn't about hasty attack or not - a "hasty attack" is still a planned attack. The author that I'm thinking about did indeed write about switching from movement to fight without any break.

His key criterion was an unusual one, I haven't seen it much in military theory during the last years: Relative readiness for battle.

His advice (based on German WW2 experiences) was to attack without further preparations if your readiness for battle is superior.

Preparations only serve the purpose of improving your relative readiness for battle, but the other side of the coin is that the opponent doesn't necessarily sleep all the time and improves as well.

A quick switch from movement to voluntary combat of course require some timely knowledge about your forces and the opposing forces - leading from the advance guard is imperative for such an approach.

The most stark difference in readiness for battle known to me (and in absence of strategic surprise) is the fate of the 5th motorised French division during the night of 16th/17th May, 1940. The division was in bivouac along a road - vehicles standing on both sides of it - on a length of ten kilometres, together with elements of a French infantry division and a French armour division.

During that night, the mere advance guard of a German armour division obliterated the 5th motorised division - it ceased to exist as a formation, with burned-out wrecks littering both roadsides on ten kilometres length.

No analysis of the hardware involved alone could explain this outcome.

Relative readiness - and thus readiness for battle in general - is obviously a major factor in warfare. It's another way to look at surprise in warfare, but it's more than that.

A formation does not need to be surprised in order to be less ready for battle. Earlier battles, poor positioning or movement, lack of suitable equipment and many other factors can contribute to inferior readiness for battle. It's thus more worthwhile to study readiness than to study surprise.

Readiness for battle is linked with agility, for reaction lags contribute to a lack of readiness against a sudden threat.

Readiness for battle - which is in large part an organisational and training challenge - ought to deserve more attention than the costly procurement of high-tech "force multipliers" that supposedly make a helicopter six times more deadly than its predecessor and so on.

You seek a cheap way to multiply your forces' capabilities? Make them the most ready for battle and seek mobile warfare!

S Ortmann

On Third World militaries

2011-09-21T00:01:00.002+02:00

It's "on and off and on again" interesting to me to look at and think about developing countries' (para)military forces. I mean countries such as in West or East Africa, not partially modern countries such as Brazil, India or oil countries.

The typical developing country has few benefits from its military. It's way too often rather a threat to political stability and usually overstretched once an actual armed conflict arises.
Border conflicts and all-out interstate warfare are rather rare. The most typical form of warfare is against an armed insurrection by a minority or against paramilitary forces infiltrating from a neighbouring country at war.

An article about the rebuilding (from scratch!) of the army of civil war-torn Liberia caught my interest a while ago and points in my opinion at the most important aspect: It's all about the personnel.

You don't need much equipment for a typical developing countries' military, especially not heavy equipment. Some cheap NORINCO small arms, mortars and RPGs plus a few patrol boats, some trucks and pickups, tents, some fatigues and boots plus a useful radio equipment are about all that it takes.

All else is a question of personnel (competence and motivation).

First of all, the personnel should not have a murderous (civil) war background or be suspected of corruption.
Second, it should be properly trained, properly cared for and loyal to the law.
Third, it shouldn't be some conscript force but rather a cadre force in order to enable a quick force expansion in times of crisis.

I would begin by setting up an academy for gendarmerie training (half year basic gendarmerie course). Indeed, I wouldn't set up a military at all, but only a gendarmerie (semi-police, semi-military institution).

This gendarmerie would be the only representative of the central government's privilege of the use of force.

The other police institutions could be locally elected sheriffs, and of course this aims at empowering the populace to get rid of corrupt local police through elections.

Parliament and government institutions can run their own compound security service and high-ranking officials can get a driver-bodyguard - but these would be restricted to handguns and a purely defensive employment of the same.

The gendarmerie would

(1) enforce lawfulness of local police forces (investigation and arrest, protecting local elections)

(2) guard the borders, serve as customs agency

(3) guard wildlife sanctuaries

(4) control resource usage (detect and investigate illegal wood harvesting, fishing, mining, pollution etc)

(5) prepare as cadre force for warfare

(6) serve as coast guard, including search and rescue

(7) provide basic airport policing and investigate illegal flights based on reports of civilian air traffic controllers

(9) serve as national police reserve, for example for securing large public events

(10) run its own academy

(11) guard prisons and watch prisoner labour groups (and as such oversee some construction projects)

(12) accompany anti-corruption officials as enforcers

(13) guard embassies

(14) serve as basic intelligence agency for observation of armed forces in neighbouring countries

(15) serve as basic counter-intelligence agency, mostly for providing basic security for critical government institutions (foreign ministry, ministry of gendarmerie, head of government office)

The seeming jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none approach is probably necessary to give the forces a good utility in peacetime. It helps furthermore to keep the gendarmerie fragmented and with near-permanent personnel turnover even in leadership positions: These would be very difficult conditions for a coup d'état planner.

The personnel would rotate irregularly, leaving enough experienced personnel in one function, but infuse new personnel as well. This near-constant movement of personnel (average duration on a specialty about 1-3 years in a row after 1 month training) should make it more difficult for individual units to get on a wrong track.

The defence itself could be based on a motorised infantry + local guided militia approach. Small teams of gendarmerie would train and lead village or local militias while gendarmerie with quickly trained enlisted volunteers would strive for a quick end in an interstate conflict through small unit and unit competence and small formation manoeuvre. Meanwhile, other quickly trained enlisted volunteers would reinforce the gendarmerie in its civilian functions. These volunteers would sign up for a two-year period, possibly extend for one ear each or get accepted into the academy for full gendarmerie training after the first two years. The motivation would come from decent pay and a bonus for later applications for government jobs or for access to higher education. Real gendarms would work for pay that's enough for a family and a pension that's enough for a household of two.

The academy would be the one central piece, and its leadership has to be selected carefully, for the academy leadership is probably the only part of the gendarmerie that would be able to pull off a coup d'état. It would thus be very restricted in terms of available weapons and ammunition. The academy could also serve as the institution's symbol and pride.

I would separate it into basic training, advanced (officer) training and specialisation training - three months, three months and one month respectively.

Developing country military affairs may lack pseudo-sexy fighters, tanks and aircraft carriers - but they add some facets to the topic of personnel. We (in the "West") don't regularly think of a military as a force to be kept in check for it could otherwise attempt a coup d'état, do we?

S O
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About time for a new political joke category in Germany

2011-09-18T19:34:00.002+02:00

Politische Piratenwitze - political pirates jokes.

I'll give it a shot with my own creation:

Warum schickt Berlin die die Bundeswehr zur Piratenjagd vor Somalia? - Weil die Piraten in Berlin sind!"

(Why does Berlin send the Bundeswehr to Somalia for pirate-hunting? - Because the Pirates are in Berlin!"

Background:

The Piratenpartei Deutschland has gained 8% of the seats in the Berlin state elections 2011.

They don't fly the Jolly Roger, but a sail is still in their logo.

What's the reason for the success of such an exotic party (which has about 1 in 3,500 Berlin's inhabitants as members)?

Put simply, the failure of the FDP and the other parties to prevent the slide towards a surveillance and police state, as well as stupid copyright law excesses and similar. The original libertarian political area has been vacated by most of the (so-called) liberals (just like they shed their social wing, too) years ago - save for a single federal minister who does a good job on this. Nowadays they FDP is reduced to shameless promotion of certain business interests, as evidenced quite early during the current federal legislation period when they pushed for a quite inexplicable value added tax cut for the hotel sector.

The FDP has had a major problem in its relative similarity with the greens on many liberal (that is, not shamelessly pro-employers) topics, and now it's even facing a party that specialises on this neglected area. Which is a shame for both (so-called) liberals and greens, of course.

Well, let's hope these pirates aren't as harmless in the pursuit of libertarian agenda as they're unarmed.
Maybe they'll eventually board the Bundestag as well and call for an end of the stupid pirate-hunting off Somalia's coast?

S O
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About setting priorities on Mindanao (and maybe everywhere)

2011-09-17T22:34:00.000+02:00

(I struggled to find an appropriate title.)

S O

Link to a discussion

2011-09-16T15:50:00.000+02:00

Link to a discussion on Auftragstaktik, centralised synchronisation, centralised coordination, cooperation and deconfliction I got involved in on the Ink Spots blog (in the comments).

related:
2009/07 Airspace deconfliction
2010/11 Planning vs. competence
2011/03 More on horizontal cooperation

S Ortmann
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Different media strategies

2011-09-15T13:10:00.000+02:00

This article (in German) describes the different strategies in Berlin and Hamburg in regard to fire raising of upper class cars.

The media reports with sensationalism about burning cars in Berlin, does strange campaigns about it, there are rumours about a political background being applied to every incident...the result is that many cars burn.

Hamburg on the other hand does largely ignore the problem in publications, no rumours are being pushed by local media - and the # of burning cars is shrinking.

- - - - -

I wonder whether the link to defence was obvious enough?!

S Ortmann

Parody: Military salute

2011-09-14T16:42:00.000+02:00

.

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The semi-mess is unraveling into a full mess (Near East)

2011-09-12T23:10:00.002+02:00

It looks as if the semi-mess of the Near East 'peace' is unraveling. The U.S.-led approach to peace in the region was to bribe governments in the region into accepting certain terms of peace (with military aid and access to prestige stuff such as photo ops with POTUS or access to shiny U.S. fighters and tanks).

Those governments that did not play along were denounced as rogue states,t error states and bullied (Libya, Syria, Iran) - while others were too unimportant and had to be content that they weren't invaded (Jordania) ... or they even were were invaded eventually (Lebanon).

The actual reconciliation between the people, between the populations, did not came into being. Israel's in my opinion terribly short-sighted security policy poured too much oil into that fire by being not content with status quo (see settlements) and military action.

Now Israel is looking at a terrible grand strategic situation. The Turkish Erdogan government is finally fed up after suffering a minimal dosage of Israel's usual disrespect for Muslim nations and turns from kind-of-ally to political opponent.

The Arab spring flushed out governments that were bribed into friendliness and even cooperation with Israel (such as the joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza) - most notably the Egyptian one.

I suspect we're looking at a major shift in Near East foreign politics. The U.S. doesn't seem to be capable or willing to renew the interim system of governments bribed into peace (hands up; who thinks that annual multi-billion dollar bribes to foreign governments are still easy in the current U.S. political climate?).

Israel appears to be becoming very busy with internal problems (not just economic ones) - problems so large that even the distraction of bullying Gaza a bit didn't sway the focus away from domestic issues.

It will be interesting to see whether the EU approach to Near East peace (bribing the people AND the government by mostly civilian assistance, especially in 'Palestinian' areas) will get the necessary funds to take over. Somehow I doubt it, given the current fiscal moods in Europe.

Maybe - just maybe - the Assad regime will be toppled, with a new chance for Israel to make peace (unlike Egyptians, Syrians should be somewhat wary of anti-Israel rhetoric since it was employed by their dictator). Maybe if they find an agreement about ~~Sinai~~ Golan heights...but that isn't going to happen, of course.

It sucks to miss a 30-year historical chance to reconcile peoples while you can still do it.

S O

War as last resort?

2011-09-11T00:01:00.000+02:00

A while ago it was fashionable to demand that war should only be considered as last resort in foreign politics. I never really got into this idea, and it was opposed by the hawks at least behind the scenes.

It was an arbitrary maxim that did not stand plausibility and theoretical tests - nor did it stand the utter lack of principles and self-discipline amongst Western foreign politicians who increasingly bought into the idea that they could 'intervene' militarily in distant places at little political cost.

Why is violence only as last resort wrong?

Well, this idea that violence is justified only if nothing else helps is misplaced. Violence is justified if it's the least terrible choice.

It makes no sense to stay peaceful and endure a predictably worse outcome than by fighting back. On the other hand, it makes no sense to fight (back) and endure a worse outcome than achievable by diplomacy.

Most importantly - and this is what hawks don't seem to get - there's extremely rarely (if ever nowadays) an opportunity to actually gain something by becoming violent.

Violence / warfare is inherently destructive, not productive. You could only gain a material advantage by stealing. You can gain immaterial advantages (such as national independence or freedom in civil war) by becoming violent, of course.

In the end, the choice between war and peace depends a lot on preferences. How highly do you rate the losses of war, how highly do you rate the advantages of achieving political objectives in war, how highly do you estimate the probability of achieving them through warfare in relation to diplomacy?

It's understandable that people disagree on the question of waging war or not.

It's also perfectly understandable that Western hawks a.k.a. warmongers want to invade country x, then y, bomb z and tell us that this is serious, good foreign policy: They are idiots. Idiots have idiotic ideas.

S O
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On the identification of natural leaders

2011-09-10T11:55:00.002+02:00

"JMA" (I know his real name, but people stick to nicknames at times, even I do) posted a question to me in the SWC blog:

[QUOTE=JMA;125537]In his blog our friend Fuchs has two enteries which connect to this issue:

"Natural", self-organised small units?

Self organization; online gamer clans and Germanic warbands

From the latter I quote:

The model with the best individual warrior being the leader is furthermore inherently inferior to a model which requires the leader to be a good leader. It's reasonable to assume that some evolutionary selection mechanism is at work in the realm of raiding warbands. This raises additional doubts about the standard description of ancient Germanic warbands.

If Fuchs would like to expand on that here in relation to how one can select for leadership prior to exposure in structured training (in peacetime) or in combat (during a war) it would be appreciated.

Personally, I rate my blog higher than a forum where texts of mine will easily get drowned within days, so I decided to reserve the answer for the blog:

My key thesis is that you can spot natural leaders easier by watching people around them than by watching the potential leader himself.

You will not spot them if you put together a group of potential leaders, but if you put them into a normal sample group they might arise into natural leadership, kind of take over the group and lead it (at least in regard to specific problems).

Why not in a group of potential leaders? I experienced that before. They fight for power or at least reject unfounded claims for power or for having the lead voice.

A normal sample group finding its natural leader is quite close to having a squad well-trained and then seeing their only NCO die in battle. Who of the enlisted men -qualified by training as all of them- will take the lead, and be followed?

The German army began to prepare exactly for this before the First World War, and very often accepted such emergency leaders into NCO rank if they did well enough.

Such natural leaders are not necessarily the best decision-makers, but at least they get loyalty much easier than others (who might need the authority and powers given by the institution to lead men). This should result in superior team morale.

S Ortmann
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Quick thought: It's a grand strategic tragedy

2011-09-09T19:24:00.001+02:00

The West attempted again and again to establish a rule of international law and its institutions, and to empower them. Most successes of these efforts came in the era since 1944, most of them associated with the United Nations or the European Community/Union.

The restrictions imposed on government's freedom of action is unpopular among them, though. Great powers eroded and evaded the rule of law thus and established a rule of force for themselves. Even small powers did so - the EU stability pact was such an example where a treaty was eroded because of tolerated violations by both small and great powers.

We have the prospect that the traditional great powers will become less powerful in relation to the rest of the world and they might actually benefit more from a rule of (international) law than ever before - but it's probably too late. They worked hard on ruining their own concept. To demand adherence to a concept they hypocritically ignored at will will be understood to be an expression of even more hypocrisy.

The exceptions to the rule of (international) law have been established as common for great powers, and future great powers will likely exploit this to their liking.

(A probably too light-hearted illustration)

In the end, the foreign political arrogance, lack of self-discipline and loss of expensively acquired foresight of the Western great powers might prove to have been a terribly short-sighted and foolish grand strategy.

S. Ortmann
.

About "ADAPTIV"

2011-09-08T12:08:00.005+02:00

"ADAPTIV" is apaprently the newest gadget of BAe Systems; hexagonal tiles that control the infrared emission of an outer surface (=tiles become warmer or cooler, as far as I understand these physics).

There's so much media echo to it that I've seen it even in a national German newspaper (German newspaper authors are usually no miltech fanbois).

What strikes me is - except the practicability (dirt, reliability, perspective, temperature management, thickness, robustness, compatibility with daylight camo paints, saltwater resistance for naval applications) and cost questions (likely restricting this to recce and point vehicles) - that so far I didn't see one implication in any comment on it:

A system that changes the infrared signature of a (almost) whole vehicle that fast (assuming the video is not accelerated) would break the lock-on of infrared-guided fire and forget missiles such as the still relatively new and modern Javelin and (Euro)Spike.

Even the fibre-optic command control mode of (Euro)Spike would largely be countered.

In other words; you wouldn't need to deploy a multispectral smoke screen between yourself and the approaching missile to break its lock-on anymore.

What's more: Infrared guidance lock-ons could be prevented by near-continuous changing of the surface's signature like Rorschach's balaklava. This might affect even automatic tracking systems such as in (IIRC) the MBT Leclerq's gunner sight.

S. Ortmann

P.S.: "adaptiv" without the -e" happens to be the German translation of "adaptive"...I guess the Brits at BAe didn't consider this in time.

Mis-use of anti-terror hysteria

2011-09-08T11:09:00.000+02:00

.
See this article (ESPECIALLY the "P2: Sneak-and-Peek" graphic!!!).

Rrelated: One example of so-called "anti-terror" legislation going ridiculously wrong

There's a pattern, and it justifies getting rid of the crap.

S O
.

Camouflage concealment and deception progresses in the 20th century's German military

2011-09-07T14:47:00.000+02:00

If you can be seen, you will be spotted.

If you were spotted, you will be identified.

If you were identified, you will be shot at.

If you were shot at, you will be hit.

If you were hit, you will be penetrated.

If you were penetrated, you are dead.

Most of the probabilities attached to these steps have worsened considerably for the target over the last about 170 years (since practical rifles and explosive grenades were introduced).

This is the reason why there are submarines, why even tank crews use camouflage, why "stealth" aircraft exist and why huge air and armour forces were eradicated in several Arab conflicts in mere days.

The best countermeasure to keep this chain of events from culminating in your death is to stop it cold at the first or second step. This is about camouflage, concealment and deception.

As usual, military history knowledge should be able to help us to grasp the problem and to develop analogue new answers to the evolving problem. That's (in part) why I compiled a list of interesting camouflage, concealment and deception advances of the German military forces during the 20th century. Some of them were internationally normal, others were possibly world firsts and some were most definitively world firsts.

These advances are primarily technical advances, for the tactical ones are way too numerous for a mere blog post.

Pre-WWI (1901-1913):

Intentional use of artificial smoke (in addition to the normal amount) in order to block the line of sight in naval surface actions (usually for withdrawal). This had been in used throughout the 19th century, but was established as a standard tactic only in WWI.

1907: German armies adopted grey-green field uniforms instead of the coloured ones (only light infantry units had used less visible colours such as green before).

First submarines joined the imperial navy. Submarines seek stealth if not invisibility by diving below the sea's surface. The aerial counterpart would be flying in or behind clouds and the ground warfare counterpart is tunnel warfare.

WWI (1914-1918):

scissor scopes / trench scopes that allow the user to stay behind cover while observing.Ironically, these scopes became practice targets for snipers and had to be camouflaged and kept small themselves.

slit visor for rifle scopes (sniper scopes), meant to avoid compromising sunlight reflections.

multi-colour painting scheme for steel helmets. Steel helmets - once introduced - also created the problem of undesirably bright sunlight reflections, as do many curved surfaces.

multi-colour painting schemes for guns and vehicles

early aircraft camouflage painting scheme

merchant submarine (blockade runner)

artificial battlefield smok

military aviation at night

employment of high altitude photo reconnaissance aircraft (Halberstadt C.V and C.VII, Rumpler C.VII)

extended army camouflaging against aerial reconnaissance

Inter-War Years (1919-1938)

early netting for camouflage

directional radio antennas for army communication

multi-colour printing on quarter shelter tarpaulin (an ingenious design that required a huge leap forward in textile printing technology)

new submarines with an unusually small above-water silhouette (meant for nightly surprise surface attacks)

introduction of many different camouflage painting schemes for military aviation

WWII (1939-1945):

deliberate exploitation of dust screens in desert warfare

slit headlamps for automobiles and trucks (meant to minimise visibility to aircraft)

night bomber technology with exhaust flame dampeners and radio navigation (Knickebein)

extremely high altitude photo reconnaissance aircraft (Ju86P and R) for missions over England (soon to be intercepted due to radar employment) and the Soviet Union (undetected till a crash landing)

radar jamming

camouflage pattern printing on both sides (coveralls, helmet covers; adaptable to different environments)

snow camouflage (white coveralls and paint)

low altitude flying (below radar and observer coverage) by Do 17 (and Ju 88) bombers beginning during the Battle of Britain (1940), later (1942) with Fw 190 fighter bombers

emphasis on dawn period attacks with bombers, especially torpedo bombers (1942)

smoke screening for industry targets; ground-based, with rockets, with light aircraft

misleading flare rockets (meant to deceive night bombers)

decoy industry targets and even major landscape manipulation to mislead bombers (including landscape manipulation to make ground imaging radars less valuable)

snorkel for diesel-electric submarines

Bold; underwater bubble generators for false sonar echoes

radar absorbing materials for snorkels

rubber surface for submarines, equivalent to modern anechoic tiles

acoustic sensors and mechanical computer for blind torpedo firing; no necessity to expose even a periscope to enemy radars

Walther engine for submarines and "electro" high-speed submarines; countering active sonar techniques of the WW2 period with unusually high underwater sprint speeds.

marginally radar-reflecting aircraft fuselage designs (example Horten Ho IX / Gotha Go 229)

Despite all this: The Red Army enjoyed the utmost respect of the German army for its ability to camouflage quicker, better and more often!

Cold War (1955-1990):

MBB Lampyridae polygonal stealth fighter (actually more of an aerial air-air missile launch platform)

control of infrared signatures by mixing hot exhaust gases with cool air (helicopters, tanks)

Panther ATGM carrier vehicle

warship countermeasures to sonar and radar detection (noise and echo reduction, decoys)

Post-Cold War (1991-2011):

AIP SSK Typ 212 submarine (air-independent propulsion - doesn't need to extend anything into the air for weeks)

infrared camouflage paints

- - - - -

There was certainly more that I did not remember, but the pattern ought to be obvious nevertheless: The German military seemed to make advances in camouflage and deception primarily during wartime. A logical consequence is that there's likely a lag of survivability technique implementation until war breaks out.

We saw this with counter-RPG, counter-mortar and counter-IED technologies during the recent wars as well.

This is deeply disconcerting.

S O
.

LPDs

2011-09-07T00:01:00.002+02:00

About nine years ago I began to notice the incredible versatility of LPD ships, first in a mine countermeasures (MCM) context (in which they usually don't operate, though).

My reasoning was that wartime naval mines tend to offer some surprises, so it's a good thing to have a good choice of MCM approaches. Helicopters, hovercraft, drone boats, underwater drones - all these small MCM assets can be employed by a LPD. The more daring approaches (using a ship in mine-infested stretches of the sea itself, primarily for employing its sonar) would be the only exceptions.

The amphibious invasion, resupply, evacuation, humanitarian aspects and the potential for being turned into a command ship, an improvised missile launch ship and so on are of course also versatility bonuses of a LPD category ship.

Chinese Type 071 LPD, (c)"kunlunshan 998"

I did never really write much about this fascination of mine for LPDs (I think I mentioned it once in a single line) on this blog, though. The reason is simple; it's about "Defence and Freedom". You usually don't need a LPD for the defence of your nation. You only want such ships if you engage at war on far away coastlines or prepare for the same. All you need to substitute for a LPD in an actual defence scenario are a few cheap civilian trucks with ISO function containers.

Refugee aid? Charter a civilian ship at a bargain price.

This is but one of many cost-lowering mechanisms that benefit countries which do not engage in far-away conflicts or prepare for the same.

S O
.

German federal politicians lost their compasses

2011-08-31T00:01:00.002+02:00

German politics at the federal level have a background noise of turmoil, and have had so for more than a decade.

The conservatives are suddenly throwing overboard long-held positions (being led by a chancellor who is not really partisan, but rather power-hungry).

The greens turned from a pacifist party into yes-sayers for the 1999 Kosovo Air War and to strong supporters of the German ISAF participation. Recently, certain prominent greens have even adopted a militaristic foreign policy position if it's only about freeing oppressed people.

They used to be the party for a military-free foreign policy, if not even for a military-free country.

The reds (social democrats) have thrown overboard their worker representation roots, fucked the unemployed with their Agenda 2010 about ten years ago (and ever since), got into photo sessions with luxury suits and cigars and embraced even the big bank CEOs as buddies.

Seriously, they can claim to have been somewhat right about capitalism, its instability and the greed thing all along - until only a few years before the 2008 economic meltdown kind of proved them right in this regard.They threw that thing overboard just in time to avoid being proved to be correct.

I sound maybe a bit critical and maybe I am, being totally dissatisfied with all but one federal minister, but I'm not alone.

There have been two great FAZ articles in the recent past which laid out the whole mess - in German language (of course):

„Ich beginne zu glauben, dass die Linke recht hat

Auch die Linken haben nichts geahnt

- - - - -

The Libyan uprising and the German reaction to it are affected by this turmoil.

The latest news s that our foreign minister (who shouldn't be one in the first place) came under pressure for not applauding the NATO success in Libya quicker than all others did.

Let's look at it:

There was a UNSC resolution that was insanity itself and Germany abstained. Why insanity? Well, it was outright bullshit to believe that you could "protect" civilians from the air and not do much else. OF COURSE would the intervention parties not protect Ghadafi-held cities against firepower of rebels. OF COURSE did protecting rebel cities against Ghadafi military deny him victory. OF COURSE did this de facto mean a regime change permission - but with terribly awkward requirements.

The UN is not in the regime change business. Libya was in no way a threat to another UN member. It was simply no business of the UN to authorise exemptions to its founding document's provisions in order to further regime change in Libya.

The whole thing was not only terribly awkward from an operational perspective and outright provoking the stretching and violation of the UNSC resolution. It was also violating the purpose of the United Nations itself and thus indirectly diminishing the reliability< and utility of the United Nations.

This has not been German policy, ever - and it made sense to abstain.

For some weird reason the 'success' of the intervention is now supposedly justifying the means.

So far it hasn't been policy of the FRG that the end justifies the means, and it's extremely surprising and awkward to see such positions being held (now - some of the same people backed the abstaining from the vote earlier!).

Let's face it: The federal German politicians have lost their compasses, have become entirely unreliable representatives. The lefties behave like right-wingers, the right-winger quit being right-wing and drop overboard decades-old positions (that's more often than not no deterioration in itself at all).

A few years ago I was able to tell others that the typical German stance on this or that security problem is xy.

Today I couldn't. A single cabinet meeting or a single day could throw everything overboard.

Greens can turn into warmongers, reds can make a move to destroy the "social" in social market economy and conservatives can make more grand political turns in a year than al others in a decade. Oh, and reds can cuddle with bank CEOs while conservatives bend over and let their junior coalition partner (liberals) give a totally nonsensical multi-billion tax gift to hoteliers.

Did I mention we have a liberal gay as foreign minister, a conservative woman as chancellor and an adopted Vietnamese as no-skill minister of the economy?

I'm conservative in one regard: I want pro-worker social democrats, pacifist-eco greens and predictable no-experiments conservatives. The voters should be able to recognise the party they voted for a mere half term later.

Oh, and I'd like to have a clue again about what's typical in regard to German security policy. Right now I can only tell that everyone seems to trust and rely on the stability of NATO by 100%.

S O
.

On infantry (breaking contact)

2011-08-29T21:32:00.004+02:00

I already expressed my strong opinion that infantry has to be elusive and break contact soon after being detected (and identified) when facing competent and well-equipped opposing forces (back in 2009).

This is a difficult thing, as evidenced by Western infantry getting pinned down by marginal effectiveness Taliban infantry in Afghanistan.

Being pinned down means to fear the effect of (edit: direct) fires. One answer to this is to be evacuated by armoured vehicles, another is to suppress all threats (difficult and unlikely) and the in my opinion most promising one is to break the line of sight with obscuration (smoke).

Smoke is no cure-all, though. It allows to break contact for a short period, but it doesn't counter pursuit. Chased infantry is forced to move even when this risks exposure to spotting, and it may be forced to evade and evade instead of executing its mission. You gotta have something to discourage or stall pursuits on the micro level.

The most promising approach is surely to ambush pursuit parties. There are many ways to do this, including pre-arranged mortar fires, rear guards, moving through the kill zone of a friendly team (with announcement, of course) or leaving behind mines.

Wait - mines? Aren't they prohibited for the German forces?

Well, not all mines. The Ottawa Treaty does not ban anti-vehicle and command-detonated mines:

Article 2
Definitions

"Anti-personnel mine" means a mine designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person and that will incapacitate, injure or kill one or more persons. [...]

Claymore-type mines are thus perfectly legal even for countries that ratified the Ottawa Treaty. They are not designed "to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person". Instead, they are designed to be exploded by pressing a trigger.

This type of mine is a classic for point defence, ambush and pursuit deterrence.

I did never understand why the Bundeswehr did not introduce this kind of munition. The 'magic' of it is that you don't need to use it very often. The mere possibility of its employment already motivates most enemies to be more careful !

There are some hazards, of course. Especially the fratricide problem may be relevant if many small infantry teams are active in the same battlefield, but in this case there's a general fratricide problem with all kinds of weapons and munitions.

The Bundeswehr should look at the MM-1 "Minimore". It's not politically correct, but then again you can't run a good army to the liking of those who dislike all things associated with conventional warfare.

MM-1 "Minimore"

Obscuration: A good (multi-spectral) and very, very responsive (one minute at most for mortar smoke fire mission, partially bursting smoke hand grenades) smoke-laying capability is essential.

Camouflage: The better the camouflage, the easier is it to slip away from sight and avoid renewed detection during partial exposure even while moving.

Fragmentation protection: Full-body (80%, especially legs) fragmentation protection helps to avoid injuries that would slow infantrymen down.

Moderate equipment weight and good fitness: Good agility and endurance (2 km off-road run with equipment) contributes the advisable amount of mobility for brekaing contact reliably.

Pursuit deterrence: Command-detonated mines and direct indirect fire ambushes serve as deterrence against pursuit.

Unpredictability: Multiple routes need to be feasible for breaking contact. The timing of breaking contact (especially in terms of seconds after smoke appeared) needs to be varied.

Electronic Warfare support: Radio jamming may help during the firefight AND during the process of breaking contact. Many deaf and mute small unit leaders tend to lose some dash.

Maintaining contact: Maintaining contact with other small teams is essential for minimising fratricide, helping each other and bolstering morale.

Readiness to sacrifice a team: A platoon will be stuck in a small battle sooner or later if its leader is not willing to sacrifice a badly pinned down small team. Sooner or later shit will happen in a conflict against a competent and well-equipped opposing force.

Quick rallying and readying for new offensive action: Leaders will be more inclined to break contact soon enough (after less than two minutes after giving away one's location) if they can expect to have their small teams ready for a new action real quick. Otherwise the temptation to keep fighting till a job was done in one attack could be too strong.

Combat discipline: No advanced tactics work without proper combat discipline, and there's no combat discipline if there's no everyday discipline in mundane matters. This is part of why military life tends to suck.

Distraction and deception: The challenge of pursuit becomes even greater if the potential pursuit party is still confused about the situation, and probably not aware of the attempt to break contact.

- - - - -

Finally, the greatest ability to break contact at the micro level doesn't help much if you don't prepare to exploit the short moment of contact (less than two minutes) fully. Weapons and tactics that achieve effect slowly are much less important than weapons and tactics that exploit surprise very well and achieve a great effect in short time, even if that cannot be sustained for long.

- - - - -

Official infantry doctrines (field manuals) still tend to imagine infantry combat as something very close to World War Two infantry combat (or are distracted by small wars topics). Part of the problem is that WW2 tactics were too blood, another part is that infantry is now very scarce and yet another part of the problem is that the equipment has changed very much.

Things need to change. The appreciation of the opponent's lethality (especially of indirect fires and high explosive munitions in general) is underdeveloped.

Everybody in an army knows that real warfare tactics have to be different than exercise tactics - the casualty rates in exercises are simply unbearable. The problem - as I see it - is that so far bearable casualty rates are only to be expected against very much inferior opponents.

This small text was intended to inspire more thought about a critical and utterly, utterly important part of the infantry's skill set; breaking contact. This tactical skill is a kind of red-headed step child in most (if not all) infantry field manuals. It smells too much like defeat, but withdrawals are not only for defeated parties - they are for surviving parties!

S O

P.S.: Just in case any reader thinks or thought about those popular breaking combat drills with lots of full auto fire and an orderly withdrawal: They're ballet routines to me, not suitable for real firefights. Their potential for success is limited to cases of great luck or low threat opposition. They're utterly impossible with regular infantry anyway for well-established psychological reasons.

The underrated genius gun

2011-08-25T21:49:00.008+02:00

World War II artillery lessons learned pointed at four desirable main improvements:

+ all-round fire capability on short notice

+ anti-tank self-defence capability

+ ability to shoot in the upper angle group* (43-70° elevation)

+ more range

A greater shell weight was not emphasised much; 149-155 mm was identified as practical calibre limit for standard artillery. 87-105 mm howitzers had proved their effectiveness. Soviet 122 mm howitzers had proved to be an excellent compromise between the 10* and 15* main calibres.

The bigger howitzer calibres (149-155 mm) justified their existence primarily with test results that showed a greater overhead cover penetration in firing missions against entrenched troops. It was proved again and again in both world wars that such firing missions were slow, expensive in terms of ammunition and in effect usually inferior to a smarter artillery use with suppressive and surprise fires.

You can bombard entrenched troops into oblivion, but operationally you can achieve much more if you overrun them with support by surprise, suppressive and blinding (smoke) indirect fires.

The need for improved shell effectiveness was afaik rated lowly in German WW2 artillery lessons learned. The first use of radio proximity fuses against land targets in late 1944 had already promised an effectiveness boost against soft targets in the open. These fuses favoured medium calibres, for small ones did initially not justify the fuse price for ground combat uses and large ones offered little additional fragmentation radius over medium ones.

The dominance of the 152 and 155 mm calibres came into being only later (1970's), when they replaced dedicated field cannons with their improved range and proved to be most suitable for cargo (bomblet) shells. The effectiveness ratio between impact-fused 105 and 150 mm HE shells was about 2:3 (at most about 1:2) and it jumped to almost 1:4 for 105 and 155 mm bomblet cargo ("ICM", "DPICM") shells.

The optimal WW2 lessons learned standard artillery piece would thus be a medium calibre gun (till the early 70's) somewhere between 105 and 149 mm. NATO countries did not use medium calibre field howitzers of larger calibre than 105 mm; the last ones in the West (120 mm howitzers) were pre-WW2 vintage, if not pre-WW1 vintage and played no role during the Cold War.

The Russians on the other hand had a great WW2 122 mm howitzer, and developed the wet dream of WW2 artillerymen in 122 mm calibre: The 122 mm 2A18 (called "D-30" by Westerners).

Serbian D-30JA1 (or D-30J)

It had
+ an unusually good range (it outranged even the standard U.S. 155 mm howitzers and self-propelled howitzers in 1965-1972!),
+ improved accuracy
+ all-round traverse
+ secondary anti-tank capability with a shaped charge shell, a low profile and a small shield
+ 70° maximum elevation
+ de facto no limit on towing speed (80 kph maximum on roads)

Its emplacement and displacement times are normal for towed howitzers. Its shell effect was significantly better than with 105 mm shells and in regard to HE with proximity fusing close to 152/155 mm shells (the Soviets were famous for having mostly ancient ammunition in their stocks, though).

Its one exceptional element is the three-legged carriage.

Three points are necessary to define a plane in math, and three are necessary to give a gun a stable position. Three relatively equal trails allowed for an unlimited traverse - unlike with the ancient box or the early 20th century split trail designs. A four-legged trail would be one more than necessary, and lead to issues during emplacement as the fourth could float in the air (have you ever seen a three-legged stool to wobble? How about a four-legged one?).

Unlimited traverse is important because it enables a quick reaction to all calls for fire (not just in a 60° arc) - and to a sudden demand for self-defence fires, as against tanks.

The first guns to make use of all-round traverse on land were as far as I know anti-air guns, especially those in 37 - 128 mm calibre (albeit not all of them). The flat four-legged (cruciform) design was apparently the dominant one for AAA.

Some anti-tank guns with a 360° traverse feature were employed as well, albeit it was quite unnecessary for up to 76.2 mm calibre because such AT guns were 'light' enough to be traversed by their crew. The French had a 47 mm SA modèle 39 TAZ prototype on three legs and the British 40 mm two-pounder AT gun had a different three-trail design, too. Both were essentially over-engineered, as much heavier AT guns were very well man-handled during WW2 (the limit for this was somewhere in the 1,000 - 1,200 kg range). The French gun can be considered to be the first one with such a system as later employed in the 2A18, though. The same three-trail concept was also used in a French 75 mm AT gun prototype before the French armaments industry quitted WW2 involuntarily.

Germany employed four-legged designs for the 8,8 cm Pak 44 / 8,8 cm K 44, for the 12,8 cm Pak 44 prototypes (two designs), the 10,5 cm FH 43 Skoda prototype and the two 15 cm FH 43 prototypes - all during WW2.

The Swedes did pick this up (post-WW2) with their Bofors 105 mm howitzer 4140 on a four-trail carriage.

Then came the Russians (Soviets) with their 2A18 design that became the dread of Central European Cold War armies (not the least due to its insurmountable quantity), a dominant artillery piece of the Soviet Pact, a prime export weapon in the Third World and a much-copied design overall. Afaik the Chinese are still manufacturing it, amongst others.

There is one drawback, though: The breech type (vertically-sliding, wedge-type breechblock) does afaik typically not allow for bag-type propellants due to imperfect sealing. Cases are apparently necessary, and this violates a specific German WW2 lesson; cases become expensive and problematic once you need to produce many millions of artillery cases per month while experiencing material shortages...

I was irritated that such a 'great' gun design never seemed to get the kind of attention and 'admiration' that even mediocre main battle tanks received. Or does "D-30" ring louder in your ear than "T-62"?

The 2A18/D-30 design was phenomenal during the 60's, great during the 70's and is still a very good choice for all ground forces that don't need to care much about the counter-artillery radar problem. It's a true classic that begins to exceed the French Soixante-Quinze in its longevity in accomplished service.

S O

*: The upper angle group was important both for firing positions in woods, for better overhead cover penetration and most importantly for a greater fragmentation effect.

Detail photos of a 2A18 gate guard.

edit Oct 2011: There was also a three-legged 25 pdr mock-up from Woolwhich for the design competition of the famous 25 pdr gun (pre-WW2 !). A prototype of a U.S. 75 mm "Divisional Gun" with three strangely long legs existed as well - it was meant to double as field artillery and heavy AAA. Source: Hogg, "British & American Artillery of World War Two"

Call for names

2011-08-23T21:50:00.000+02:00

Anglophone discussions on the art of war are usually circling around either dead authors or around anglophone authors.

The anglophone world makes up only a small part of the world, though - we are certainly missing a lot if we ignore the rest of the world!?

I myself had huge difficulties to spot art of war talent that does not publish in English. Right now I could think only of one who's alive, and he ceased to write about the art of war more than two decades ago.

Thus a call for names:

Do you know talented authors/ thinkers on the art of war who do not publish in English?
(Post-Cold War activity is preferred.)

Body Armour (again)

2011-08-20T18:51:00.001+02:00

It looks as if even during small wars the development is creeping towards full body frag protection.

Ballistic Underwear Coming Soon

I wonder when they will come out with a full body armour rated for frag protection and begin to hype it as a great thing!?

Body armour

Body Armour (Update)

You (could) have seen it here first.

S O

Two clarifications about Germany-related stuff

2011-08-20T15:05:00.004+02:00

There was a mishap at a canoe world championship in Hungary a few days ago. The first instead of third strophe of the German national anthem was played.

The first one has a bad reputation because of its text (which is outright nice in comparison to the bloodthirsty French national anthem!) and only the third strophe of the song is therefore the recent German national anthem.

Even many Germans are ill-informed and believe that the first strophe is even illegal. It isn't.

The first strophe has the famous line "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles", which means translated literally "Germany, Germany over everything". It means primacy, obviously.

The misunderstanding - which I as a German want to counter here because most of my readers aren't Germans - is about the context.

The text dates back to 1841, and Germany looked at that time like this (follow the link; cannot include image here due to a stupid copyright law).

It was a patchwork of small states, not united at all (unlike Russia, England, France, Spain) - a late-comer in terms of nation state building. The context of the primacy of Germany in the song was therefore not the primacy of Germany over its neighbours, Europe or the world - it was the primacy of the idea of a nation over the many small reactionary states in the germanophone world.

- - - - -

A similar confusion is about what "Großdeutschland" (~great Germany) means.

There were multiple scenarios for a German unification before 1870:

* Kleindeutsche Lösung (small german solution) - a Germany led by Prussia, without the German-speaking Austrian countries.

This was realised in 1870.

* A Großdeutsche Lösung - a Germany including both Prussia and Austria.

This was realised (kind of) in 1938-1945, when Hitler annexed the then small power Austria.

Again, neither really included any consideration about Germany's relations to non-German speaking countries in the first place. Even the Swiss were ignored.

- - - - -

This wasn't much about defence and/or freedom, but I think it was nevertheless worth an entry on this blog. Too many people still cling to wrong interpretations in regard to the national anthem strophes or the word "Großdeutschland".

S O
.

A few links to articles

2011-08-20T14:42:00.001+02:00

“Probability neglect”: why policy-makers are constitutionally incapable of formulating evidence-based anti-terrorism policy

This can be extended to all things, of course. An the it would become obvious that paying much attention to errorists is stupid anyway - even without acknowledging that getting attention is their business.

Why poor people support tax breaks for the rich?

Sociology/psychology experiments and research results are often very interesting and illuminating.

In the military context,t his article reminded me of what I read about Vietnamese guerrillas:
Their infantry was not the lowest social rank, the least deserved occupation. Instead, the Ho Chi Minh trail porters and other porters were considered to be more lowly than the infantry guerrillas. This did apparently push the latter's morale and recruiting a bit.

Infantry and engineers compete in our Western forces for the reputation of the least desirable wartime occupation. Infantry does so because of its traditionally high casualty rate (mildly covered up by the decentralised glorification of "operators" etc in entertainment since the 90's). Engineers do so because of their hard work - and in countries such as Germany because of their high casualty rate as well (some, but not all, armies employ engineers as combat troops for deliberate attacks and emergencies).

S O

edit: related Defence and Freedom text

Worst case scenarios and preparations

Another view on the source for the debacles of late 1914

2011-08-19T23:11:00.000+02:00

Back in June I linked to an online book about Boer War (1900) tactical experiences. The known tactical problems of the 1900's (described well in that book) coupled with the obvious aspect of quantity for a European Great War (armies numbering millions of men, able to man continuous front lines from sea to sea) led to the conclusion that armies could indeed fail in all major offensive manoeuvres once a continuous front-line was established.

This was already published by civilian warfare analyst/hobbyist Jan Gotlib Bloch well before the outbreak of the First World War, based on his talks with officers and on published material. In fact, he came to his largely correct conclusions without reports from the last Boer War.

The seemingly unavoidable stalemate of continuous front-lines facing each other seemed to be almost unbreakable. Low level manoeuvres (squads and platoons exploiting micro-terrain features such as shell craters, ditches, defilades instead of corps marching around an opposing armies' flank) wre not yet developed.

Or were they?

Well, yes. They existed - and had existed most likely for thousands of years (the first warriors were hunters, after all!).

A relevant example were the light infantry outfits, the skirmishers, of the 18th and early 19th century.

In 1813-1815 the Prussian skirmishers performed pretty well.
A member of Prussian 12th Brigade wrote, "We moved up via Meusdorf and the brickworks against Probstheida. The first thing that hit our skirmishers - of which I was one - was an artillery crossfire. It didn't take long for us to be scattered. We reformed and threw ourselves into a sunken road up against the loopholed garden wall of the village. We waited until the French had fired a full volley at our main body, jumped out of the road and rushed forward to take half the village. The surprised French fell back before us, abandoning a battery of 10 guns in the centre of the village." (Digby-Smith - "1813: Leipzig" p 195)

In 1815 during the battle of Ligny, Bünau's battalion (II/19th Infantry) had spent much of the day fighting either in skirmish order or in small battle groups. The skirmishers often had to crawl through gaps in the fences and hedges or very quickly move from one place to another. If all Prussian infantry was like Bünau's battalion, Ligny would probably never fall into French hands.

(taken from here)

How could this have happened?

There was apparently a really, really weird twist of military history during the mid-19th century.

# The old system of light troops mostly with rifles and line troops with muskets was broken apart with the unified infantry of the all-blackpowder rifles age (1840s to 1880's). The new, standardised infantry had rifles that matched or exceeded the rate of fire of earlier muskets and matched or exceeded the accuracy of earlier pattern rifles.

Regrettably, this advance in equipment quality was not matched by a sufficiently strong advance in doctrine and training towards the former light infantry patterns. Instead, we kept line infantry - just armed them with rifles.

# The large U.S. Civil War saw millions of troops with weapons of average modernity, but they were raised quickly and trained poorly by officers and non-commissioned officers who were themselves mostly trained in military skills only after the war broke out.

# One major European war of the period - the Crimean War - did expose many deficiencies, but told us very little about infantry.

# The other major European wars of the period - Prussia vs. Austria and German states vs. France - were relatively quick wars without much influence of field fortifications.

So basically the skill set was in part existent and the tools were advanced for tactical success. The lack of proper infantry training and doctrine led to tactical offensive impotence and thus to operational impotence once the field armies were deployed properly.

Some sought a solution fro the problem in more and better weapons of war (poison gas, tanks, mortars, submarines, aircraft, airships, flamethrowers), others sought them in proper infantry training (Germany, Italy and belatedly Austria-Hungary).

The whole initial mess of late 1914-early 1917 was probably in great part avoidable if only the majority had not dominated the new standard infantry. On the other hand, anticipating the problems was already a major achievement that deserves recognition and fame, especially in Bloch's case since he was a civilian. The choice of a suitable solution was apparently out of reach until after many, many bloody lessons.

S O
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Photo? Handcuffs!

2011-08-15T06:13:00.003+02:00

Police Chief Confirms Detaining Photographers Within Departmental Policy

Now if anybody uses the stupid "Land of the free" phrase in my presence without sarcasm, I'll have one more point to throw at him.

(As if the Patriot Act wasn't enough...)

S O

Authoritarian reflexes

2011-08-15T06:10:00.002+02:00

UK riots: Having learned nothing from Arab Spring, Cameron pursues a social media crackdown

Brits: Tell Parliament to keep its hands off social media

David Cameron’s net-censorship proposal earns kudos from Chinese state media

edit: Repressing the Internet, Western-Style

edit2: MI5 joins social messaging trawl for riot organisers

I really wish I (we) knew a reliable immunisation against authoritarian reflexes.

So far it seems as if careful examination of politician's character, written constitutions and public resistance even to the tiniest salami slice tactic steps are needed to keep the problem in check.

S O
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What's so bad about being encircled?

2011-08-14T19:57:00.000+02:00

The classic answer is that encircled troops lose confidence and are cut off from their camp. Encircled armies in the age of sword, spear and bow were usually defeated.

Encirclements began to look different later on, in 1870-1914. Armies didn't have such a reliance on camps, but employed railway lines. The basic understanding about why encirclements were bad wasn't changed, though.

The real change came in 1940 when railway logistics, (supposedly) continuous front lines and (partial) encirclements were combined. This is the period that interests me most, for it comes the closest to our time.

A logistician would say being encircled is bad because they cut lines of supply.

Others might say it's bad because you suddenly have to provide security all-round (strangely, this didn't seem to bother the encirclers so much).

A theatre commander might regret that the encircled troops will not be available for his operations.

Everyone will agree that encircled forces suffer badly and are often lost.

The real core behind all this is what's really interesting, what lies behind the petty surface:

Forces being encircled means that they don't meet their purpose (any more).

Their purpose was usually either to attack or to hold a part of the (continuous) front line. Neither is possible for encircled forces any more. The loss of their functionality is an immediate blow tot heir whole army.

Forces getting encircled was in part so horrendous because World War Two forces in Europe were so very much dependent on continuous front lines for man, many purposes.

This aspect is lost. Nowadays there's likely not going to be a real continuous front line anyway due to lack of forces. This explains in part why nowadays the logistical and attrition effects of encirclements are so very prominent in our thought.

I wrote several (unpublished) drafts to approach the issue of functions in military theory. We don't pay enough attention to them.

Sure, we know how to encircle (in theory), we know what providing security means etc - but few people still seem to reason about the function of tools, weapons and methods.(1) We're looking very much at resembling historical examples or at technical specifications of hardware. Yet, what exactly ire the functions of a tank, of a front line, of firepower, of reconnaissance?

Even I - complaining about it myself - didn't pay attention to it every time. Once I wrote about what armoured reconnaissance is good for. Yet, I omitted the very basic raison d'être for recce troops:

You expose few to great hazards in order to spare much more.

Yes, armoured reconnaissance is about sacrificing a part of your forces for overall success and survivability. This was somehow lost in the age of near-zero casualty campaigns.

I will - sooner or later - write an exhaustive blog post about the (lost) function of front lines, and I wrote already a lot about how to replace said functions within current resource constraints.

This example - lost function due to a method that slipped out of use - shows the importance of a theoretical understanding of functions. Without it, you may not see clearly what you're missing, what you need to get a substitute for somehow.

Without a clear theoretical understanding of functions in warfare we'll blunder in our next great war, being no better than the ill-prepared blunderers of 1914.

S O

(1) One notable exception is Robert R. Leonhard.

An analysis of late propeller era combat aircraft

2011-08-12T20:43:00.008+02:00

Back in the early 30's bombers were still crude: The were meant to take off, cruise, drop bombs, cruise possibly fend of fighter with machine guns and land. This was quite the same approach as in the First World War. In fact, night bombing (which happened to small extent in WW1) was included, but not exactly popular due to poor accuracy. This dominant bomber concept was so crude that Ju 52/3m passenger aircraft were adaptable as auxiliary bombers.

This primitive model of a bomber was shaken in the 30's by two new concepts; the dive bomber (for better accuracy of bomb drops; notably the Ju 87) and the fast bomber (for avoiding fighters; notably the early Blenheim, early Do 17 and SB-2).

The machine gun defence proved to be unsatisfactory. It was difficult to add more defensive machine guns, while fighters increased their weaponry from two to up to eight machine guns. Armour plating, armoured windshields and self-sealing fuel tanks plus the increasing strength of airframes reduced the effectiveness of normal machine guns. Fighters were able to cope by adding 20 mm autocannons, while the same calibre was very unwieldy in movable installations for bomber defences.

Bombers needed better survivability than armour and machine guns could afford. Four approaches promised relief; flying higher, flying faster, flying in darkness and flying with escort fighters.

To fly higher was no good solution (for bombers) because of the inherent accident and reliability issues (due to freezing temperature), added aircraft cost, low payload and poor accuracy of bombing runs.

To fly faster was a questionable solution (for bombers) because it was a time of rapid improvements of top speeds in aviation. A bomber prototype could easily fly faster than all contemporary fighters and still find itself to be much slower than hostile fighters during a war only a few years later. The Mosquito was later on successful with this approach, but only so because it faced opposing forces that were limited in their performance (especially at high altitude) in part by an inferior raw materials base. Propeller aircraft were also bound to meet the limit of their potential at about 800 km/h, and without the introduction of turbine engines we'd have seen an air war scenario in which almost all aircraft would have had a very similar top speed again (as they had already in WW1).

To fly in darkness meant high training and avionics costs, a high accident rate and a typically poor accuracy.

To fly with escort fighters proved to be most successful, but that wasn't about bomber design itself.

- - - - -

Reconnaissance aircraft of the late 30's looked still a lot like First World War reconnaissance aircraft, but they had badly fallen behind fighters in both cruise and top speed. The Hs 126 is a typical example. The poor survivability of such recce aircraft called for new approaches.

One approach was to fly higher - this proved less problematic for (photo) reconnaissance than for bombing, and the Ju 86P was one of the extreme examples.

Another approach was to fly faster, and this worked for recce better than for bombing simply because air forces needed fewer recce aircraft and the fast fighters could be adapted to photo reconnaissance. The Spitfire PR versions are a good example, also the F-4/-5/-6 U.S.A.A.F. aircraft and the Bf 109 and Fw 190 with recce kit (a specific "Rüstsatz"; mission module). There were also successful two-engined reconnaissance aircraft and even some dedicated fast photo recce aircraft.

The highly successful Japanese Mitsubishi Ki-46 III high speed photo reconnaissance aircraft

To fly in darkness proved to be a niche escape, for both illumination/flash bombs and infrared photography were apparently not fully satisfactory.

To fly with escort fighters - a typical WW1 approach - was unsuccessful because it was both uneconomical and because the ground control for interceptors enabled the defenders to face such a recce package with altitude and numerical superiority just about every time. This in combination with the fact that a single recce aircraft suffices to make photos while a single bomber doesn't suffice to bomb a target properly defined the recce aircraft as unique. They were usually alone on their missions. This influenced which survivability strategies did work and which didn't.

A unique alternative for battlefield recce aircraft was to fly too slow. Fighter had advanced in top speed at the cost of aerodynamics that led to a high stall speed. The Fi 156 was very successful as a short range battlefield reconnaissance aircraft in part because even fighter aces had difficulties to get a Fi 156 into their crosshairs if they managed to do it at all. It was just too damn slow and agile. The same effect was observed in trial mock dogfights against Fl 282 helicopters. Very slow recce aircraft were only suitable for very short range aerial recce and very vulnerable to anti-air weapons, though.

The next analysis is about fighters. There were basically two directions for fighter philosophies in the 30's; the manoeuvrability school (Italians, Japanese, Czechs) that emphasised dogfights and even aerobatics (overall a similar philosophy as in WW1 air combat) and the high speed school (Germany) that emphasised a superior speed. The Russians initially followed both schools with their I-16 (fast monoplane) and I-153 (more agile biplane).

The high speed school was typically combined with low drag liquid cooled engines that were less powerful than radial engines (during the 30's) and did thus initially lack a superiority in climb rate over the more agile fighter designs. Liquid-cooled engines caught up with radials when radials grew to the limits of single radials (the solution was the double radial engine, but that brought cooling issues) at the end of the 30's. By 1939/1940, both liquid and air cooled engines were at about 1,000 to 1,300 hp. By this time liquid cooled engine-driven fighters had caught up with comparable radial-driven fighters in climb rate.

The whole competition changed during WW2. The high manoeuvrability school lost out in Europe; faster fighters were dominant because they chose when to fight and only they were able to cope with fast bombers. The Japanese stuck to the manoeuvrability school with few exceptions, Italy did too (and failed for several reasons) and the British did at least keep a better manoeuvrability than Bf 109 fighters.

The new conflict was different than the 1930's conflict between fighter philosophy schools: All fighters had to have a similar top speed to be competitive, but they proved to have different manoeuvrability strengths.

The vertical air combat manoeuvrability school emphasized climbing and diving and in some cases also a high roll rate. The horizontal air combat manoeuvrability school emphasized tight turns and a low stall speed. The vertical school won, as evidenced by the Fw 190's success over Spitfires and the 1943-1945 success of U.S. fighters against most Japanese fighters. The reason was simple; the vertical school was again dominant, for it was the key to offensive manoeuvres. The horizontal manoeuvring was only at its premium in defensive manoeuvring and at very low altitudes.

Vertical air combat manoeuvre example: A Bf 109 expert vs. defensive fighter ring

To fly tight turns was mostly about shaking off a pursuing fighter (and had little chance of success if employed offensively), while climbing and diving was mostly about attacking a fighter (often with the deadly advantage of surprise). Defence may be stronger than offence most of the time, but offence is decisive. The vertical air combat manoeuvrability school was furthermore still potent in numerical inferiority situations.

Another division between fighters was between fighters for high altitude and for low altitude. Eastern Front and Pacific air wars were mostly about low altitudes, while Western European air combat was mostly about high altitudes. There was a spiral for ever greater practical flight ceilings whenever high altitude combat became dominant in a theatre. The Allies won this race in 1942-1944 thanks to the British lead in two-stage superchargers and the American ability to supply the necessary heat-resistant alloys for turbochargers. The Germans trailed in both regards, but jumped far ahead in 1944 with turbojet engines (even though they lacked heat-resistant alloys and had a very short lifespan, poor reliability and handling characteristics).

It's also possible to divide between short range and long range fighters; long range was important for escort fighters and over the vast expanses of the Pacific theatre, while short range was sufficient for interceptors and fighters supporting ground warfare.

- - - - -

The post-WW2 period saw competing philosophies for fighters as well:

# Short range ("WVR") vs long range ("BVR") air combat

# Short range fighters vs. long range fighters

# high performance vs. huge numbers

# pursuit of superior speed and altitude performance after the first Mach 2 generation (mostly MiG-25, later F-22)

# low visibility to sensors ("stealth") vs. much external hardware

# avionics with finesse vs. brute power avionics (example for the latter: MiG-25 radar)

- - - - -

It's interesting stuff (to me), but I'm not so sure about the lessons.
Aircraft kept becoming more capable, more refined, more oriented at their purpose.
There's an eternal development for better survivability.
Superior offensive qualities tend to dominate over the superior defensive qualities in air combat.

S O
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Public debt and the military

2011-08-10T21:16:00.001+02:00

Maybe you expect some commentary on the effect of public debt on security policy on this blog?

Nahh, I paid attention to that combination back in 2008, when it wasn't fashionable and when it did not look as if a "very serious" person writes "very serious" stuff when you wrote about it.

2008/10:

Japan and the risks of a huge government debt

2008/10:
Public debt and Military expenditures diagrams

Long story cut short:

In my opinion

a huge public debt is an important dampener for arms races and baseline military expenditures in peacetime. A badly indebted country becomes less likely to cope properly with a rising threat.

France and especially the UK of the 1930's are good examples in my opinion.

S O
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"Helmets and Body Armor in Modern Warfare" by Bashford Dean, 1920

2011-08-06T19:13:00.001+02:00

I recommend this very interesting old book about WWI-era helmets, shields and body armour.

http://www.archive.org/stream/helmetsbodyarmor00deanuoft#page/n11/mode/thumb

book cover

I am in awe of the researching skills that authors needed in the pre-internet age. This author certainly had huge travel expenses for this book.

Especially interesting to me were the good reviews for the "jazeran" body armour (p. 255ff):

The jazerans illustrated herewith furnished a remarkably comfortable body defense; they were worn hours at a time and under difficult conditions by various experimenters. The reports declare that they did not cause great discomfort, even though their weight was considerable (eleven pounds). The scales of plates of which they were made up were pressed in manganese steel of helmet thickness and were then riveted to a leather lining; they withstood the test of service ammunition with revolver. These defenses of both types were sent abroad and tested at American Headquarters. The report upon them stated that they have "excellent qualities" and were "recommended as a body armour, thoroughly practicable, no inconvenience to wearer, comfortable, silent."

related Defence and Freedom text:
Another shot at the historical failure of fragmentation protection vest procurement

S O
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On multinational formations

2011-08-04T20:00:00.001+02:00

In November I asked readers about what topics they'd like to see, one suggestion was

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the prospects for the Eurozone joint strike force, especially given the current financial problems.

My reply was:

There are multiple joint European (or at least multinational) paper tigers, such as Eurocorps and a EU Battlegroup. I already planned to write about this in general. The short version is that I like multinational corps as peacetime formations, but dislike multinational divisions and brigades. My rationale is about the inner workings of an army and about budgets, it's not about foreign policy.

I postponed this topic in a faint hope that my opinion would evolve into something better, but it seems as if I am simply done forming my opinion on this topic.

Thus let's elaborate a bit:

There's generally much to learn if you haven't been at a real war for generations. Multinational formations are great opportunities (easily wasted) for exposing your forces to better practices of foreign forces.

Multinational formations are furthermore extreme challenges for interoperability. A country which expects to be brothers-in-arms with another country in a future conflict can expect benefits from multinational exercises. Multinational formations aren't truly necessary for this, but they kind of serve the same purpose.

Multinational army corps make a lot of sense for economies of scale, as well. Small alliance members may not have corps-sized ground forces in peacetime and may thus be unable to prepare their officer corps properly for corps command and higher. Multinational corps are a good approach here, for they add foreign forces and thus enable the formation of a peacetime army corps.

This is only purposeful for actual army corps, of course. Paper tiger corps which have no or few direct and permanent subordinate formations make no sense whatsoever. They're just dead weight, jobs for staff personnel - waste of taxpayer money.

Now that's the good side of the coin. The advantages are all about preparing for defence.

- - - - -

Now about the problems, and I think I need to elaborate on the background a bit:

#1 Cohesion

#2 Cohesion

#3 Cohesion

A formation without good cohesion is prone to fall apart in a battlefield crisis. The German army of the First World War had great cohesion because - as a heritage of the multi-state past - its divisions were Bavarian, Hessian, Prussian and so on. The personnel was very homogeneous at least in regard to geographical origin.

The German army of the Second World War remembered the cohesion advantage of those older units and built most infantry divisions with a high degree of homogeneity of regional origin. Divisions had their area of origin, so you could tell whether a division was Bavarian, Hessian and so on - often times the regions of origin were even much more focused.

This has been identified as being one of the hidden sources of strength of the German army in WW2.

Cohesion can be built at much smaller levels - down to company level, for example. Your odds of getting a good cohesion with a multinational personnel pool are rather sub-average no matter how much attention you pay to unit and small unit cohesion, though. Ask the Russians.

This is my core argument against multinational units and formations.

The look great on paper (to civilian politicians), they are interesting in several regards, they are possibly even a good idea in peacetime - but they are horribly poor ideas in wartime. Actually, advocating multinational units or formations for wartime purposes is in my opinion a tell-tale sign for incompetence in ground forces affairs (it's all very different in air and naval forces).

Multinational small units, units and formations are prone to fail in wartime moments of crisis due to the ceteris paribus reduction of their cohesion by multi-nationality.

This tells pretty much everything about my opinion on European military integration:

Air force; maybe. Navy; maybe. Army; keep formations national!

S O

P.S.: I skipped the problem of friction (language, regulation, culture and hardware compatibility) because it's so utterly obvious.

This happens when...

2011-08-01T18:29:00.001+02:00

.
... I don't post that much any more!

Back in early February I boasted my record results (page loads) from January, a month with more blog posts than days.
Well, that was not exactly indicative of the trend in the following months - neither page loads nor blog posts.

This is how it looks today:

Not that high any more, rather back to 2010 levels!

Quick, we need an excuse!

Yeah, that works as an excuse.

I didn't post that much, thus readers came less often to the blog.

(Don't even consider to blame a drop in quality ;) ).

Now we've got disappointing numbers and a sorry excuse.

Well, what's left to do?

Right, crunch the numbers in ~~Excel~~ OpenOffice.org Calc till something looks good for you!

Here we are. Page loads per blog posts keep growing.
I feel the readership's love again! :)

This helped, too:

(Statcounter screenshot)

S O

About staff quickness: This should settle the issue for good and all

2011-07-26T19:09:00.009+02:00

Again and again I am flabbergasted that staff officers (who are used to NATO staffs) consider staff procedure speeds fine that I consider to be pretty much suicidal.

I assume that this post will settle this issue once and for all at least for my private communications. From now on I will simply give the link to this when someone has suicidal ideas about proper staff speeds.

- - - - -

Back in 1940, on May 13, there was a battle that basically meant the destruction of the French army and the (temporary) loss of French sovereignty was ensured.

I have no doubt that emulating the French in this battle is unacceptable to EVERYONE, and thus should make the modern staff craziness obvious.

The action - crossing the Meuse river at Sedan after a few days of surprise advance through the Belgian Ardennes - was planned in detail as earl as March, and rehearsed in a wargame on May 1st. The plan worked reasonable to spectacular (reasonable in details, spectacular in effect) and was executed very close to original planning.

Yes, planning well in advance has at times benefits. That's what enticed NATO armies to create huge and ponderous staffs, after all. Hint: The French had planned much and wargamed themselves as well.

The surprise river crossing began with major air attacks.

1200: Major air attacks give away the site for the river crossing

1600: Infantry crosses the river.

2240: Dominating heights 8 km behind the crossing site taken by German infantry.

Now the French side:

1600: French General Grandsard (Corps commander) orders the corps reserves forward.

1730: Order arrives (apparently by motorcycle courier) at infantry regiment 213.

1800: Order arrives at Armour battalion 7.

1830: Infantry regiment 213 commander LtCol Labarthe orders to commence the march at 2000 (happens with delay).

2000: French division commander General Lafontaine orders counterattack after some confusion

2130: Armour battalion 7 begins its march.

0730: Begin of counter-attack

(The French side had a corps staff delay of 0-4 hrs depending on where to start the count, and a division staff delay of up to 4 hours. The total delay from revealing the location of the attack and counteratttack was 19.5 hrs.)

Now again the German side:

The German top officer on the scene of the counterattack, LtGen Kirchner, took ten (10 !) minutes to think up and issue orders for the German reaction to the counterattack.

Keep in mind: Most of the German Sedan attack was an infantry attack with foot mobility. The first German tanks crossed the Meuse on 0720 on the 14th. These tanks still won the speed competition against the French tanks which began their counterattack apparently at 0730 and had a shorter route to the critical point.

This is the battle that laid the foundation for the notion that the French lost the campaign of 1940 decisively within days because their command system was too slow to cope with the German command system's agility.

Yes, they were slow - in relation to the Germans of May 1940.

On the other hand, the French were extremely fast - in another relation.

Under some in-NATO national doctrines, staff procedures wouldn't have allowed for a counterattack order within four hours. Instead, staff procedures would have required a multi-layer process with info collection, processing, meetings, deliberations ...

Sure, a modern senior officer on the scene could (IF he was on the scene) issue reaction orders in ten minutes as well.

The problem is that this is not what doctrine and training emphasize.

Western forces train for slowness (a.k.a. thoroughness) more than for quickness.

- - - - -

Another problem for the '12 hrs staff procedures are quick enough' school of thought:

An attack of part of the 7th Panzerdivision (Rommel) began on 16th May at 1800.

1800 Attack begins.

2400 30 km advance already, French 5th motorised Division is being overrun in its resting area along a road and is being obliterated by parts of the 7. PD.

0600 7. PD forces cross the river Sambre.

0630 Regiment-equivalent advance guard reaches Le Cateau at 50 km depth.

That were about 12 hours. By now the "12 hrs staff procedures are quick enough' school would have prepared an order to react to the initial beginning of the attack.

Keep in mind that the tanks of this time reached only up to 40 km/h and were unable to shoot effectively on the move. Today's mounted combat and attacks can be much, much quicker.

- - - - -

Well, if ANYBODY does EVER again attempt to convince me for example that a 12 hrs planning cycle (or even something with up to 48 hrs !) is fine ... I'll simply tell him to read this.

Well, maybe I'll also tell him to forget everything he ever learned about staff procedures.

S O

P.S.:
Military history offers an incredible quantity of examples that smash slow staff proponents. I was lazy and took both examples and their details from Frieser's book.

edit: Another broad hint - the 2005 study "Trading the Saber for Stealth [...]" (I mentioned this nice study earlier) says:

For example, during the typical "high-intensity" rotation at the NTC, battalion and brigade commanders are required to solve a new tactical problem approximately every 48 hours. During the offensive maneuver portion of Operation Iraqi Freedom, commanders found themselves dealing with new and complex tactical problems on the order of every eight to 12 hours.