2020/09/26

Sun Tzu: the Art of War (IV): Tactical Dispositions

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I will use this easily accessible translation version
to comment on the Art of War, and I will pretend that Sun Tzu was indeed a historical person. 
Sun Tzu artist's impression from Qīnggōngdiàn Cánghuàběn
清宮殿藏畫本 / 清宫殿藏画本


IV. Tactical Dispositions

1. Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.

It is common in sports and warfare that you cannot win from a position of inferiority without taking risks. The risk aversion shown in this first paragraph makes sense in the context of a few states struggling against each other with decisive battles and trying to destroy each other. It's no good advice for campaigning in general. You need to dare something to achieve something.
Eisenhower had a prepared statement of resignation in his pocket when he ordered the Normandy invasion. He would have been catastrophically ineffective if he hadn't accepted the possibility of defeat.

2. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

The literal "security" effort is very important from the lowest tactical levels to the operational level of war. It's also a diversion from whatever effort shall bring victory. You may have combat troops securing your flanks and rear and your supply convoys, but those combat troops may be lacking at the actual battle.

3. Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.  

The absence of certainty is trivial, but some opponents are in a hopeless situation without being at fault for it.

4. Hence the saying: One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.

This is a huge contrast to earlier parts that pretended victory or defeat was all about whether a general did everything right. Sun Tzu is really not to be taken literally!
Such inconsistencies enable modern readers to cherrypick whatever fits their pre-conceived notions.

5. Security against defeat implies defensive tactics; ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive.

6. Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength.

This was commented upon before; it doesn't require superior strength to win battle. It doesn't even only require superior local strength. Superiority also doesn't provide much reliability of success, either.

7. The general who is skilled in defense hides in the most secret recesses of the earth; he who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven. Thus on the one hand we have ability to protect ourselves; on the other, a victory that is complete.

8. To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.

Reading the battlefield to detect opportunities, risks or even only to understand what's going on is very difficult on a modern battlefield. It's "empty", usually. You may hear vehicles and explosions, but you see very little even in absence of artificial smoke. Everyone tries to stay alive, and this necessitates to be not easily visible for almost the entire duration of the battle. Everything that can be seen can be shot at, and what can be shot at can be destroyed or killed.

9. Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight and conquer and the whole Empire says, "Well done!"

10. To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear.

11. What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.

Sun Tzu is here basically back to making the demand that the general contributes as much as possible to victory himself rather than merely exploiting favourable circumstances such as resources abundance. 

12. Hence his victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom nor credit for courage.

13. He wins his battles by making no mistakes. Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.

That is, unless the enemy makes no mistakes, either. Once again, it's trivial to see that the literal interpretation of Sun Tzu's lines is plain nonsense. He demands that the general isn't sloppy, makes full use of the art of war - but everyone makes mistakes, period. To avoid mistakes altogether is simply no option.

14. Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy.

15. Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

This is super important, and I wrote about this before at least twice. The battle should be won in advance by creating the conditions for victory (shaping operations et cetera). This may take a bit more time, but it provides better odds and even in the event of success lower losses than a riskier brute force approach. To seek superiority by amassing more forces for decisive battle in a Clausewitzian way of war is not satisfactory on its own. Even a superior army force should first erode the opponent's morale and supply situations, seek to surprise and to fight at superior readiness in general.

16. The consummate leader cultivates the moral law, and strictly adheres to method and discipline; thus it is in his power to control success.

And yet again Sun Tzu pretends that victory or defeat is all about the general he seeks to advise, ignoring that the opponent may be symmetrical. This is once again meant to motivate the student of war rather than an accurate statement about war itself.

17. In respect of military method, we have, firstly, Measurement; secondly, Estimation of quantity; thirdly, Calculation; fourthly, Balancing of chances; fifthly, Victory.

18. Measurement owes its existence to Earth; Estimation of quantity to Measurement; Calculation to Estimation of quantity; Balancing of chances to Calculation; and Victory to Balancing of chances.

I suspect that something was lost in translation. These two paragraphs are way too ambiguous.

19. A victorious army opposed to a routed one, is as a pound's weight placed in the scale against a single grain.

Pursuit often if not most often caused greater losses to a defeated army than battle itself did. You need to keep your route of escape unknown if possible and reach a safe distance to the enemy army main body. Then you need to reassemble, motivate and reinforce the army before it could succeed in battle again. This was mostly about setting up a new defensible front line in the rear during the World Wars and the Korean War

Clausewitz introduced the concept of 'culminating point' to describe that at some point even a successful attack becomes so weak that a previously defeated defence becomes an equal force again. To go beyond this point risks a successful counteroffensive.

A typical historical reason for this would be the detachment of troops for occupation duty and an ever-growing distance to one's depots. 20th century warfare also knew culminating points, and they were typically about getting too far ahead of the rail head. Most supplies were moved by ships or rail over long distances and moved by lorries or carts only for a relatively short distance. To stretch the latter would reduce the throughput, and the attacking forces would run out of fuel or (back in 1914) artillery munitions.

20. The onrush of a conquering force is like the bursting of pent-up waters into a chasm a thousand fathoms deep.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de 

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at 8 comments:

2020/09/19

Sun Tzu: the Art of War (III): Attack by Stratagam

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I will use this easily accessible translation version
to comment on the Art of War, and I will pretend that Sun Tzu was indeed a historical person. 
Sun Tzu artist's impression from Qīnggōngdiàn Cánghuàběn
清宮殿藏畫本 / 清宫殿藏画本

III. Attack by Stratagem

1. Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.

Capturing (conquering) hostile lands is not really how modern wars get waged, save for by Russians and (kind of) the Israelis. The paragraph applies to only one particular form of war, a war of conquest.
One might interpret the paragraph differently, though: It might be about the period of campaigning only, rather than about the post-war period.

There's a thing that Sun Tzu cannot possibly have thought of: Modern military battle exercises tend to lead to exaggerated (simulated) casualties and they are usually about combat troops vs. combat troops contacts. Actual conventional warfare would see brigades and divisions fighting that have much less than 1/3 infantry and armoured combat vehicle troops each. Historically, even sturdy formations retreated after suffering 20...30% casualties. A translation to the smaller share of combat troops in modern army brigades allows for how this would play out these days: A brigade would likely withdraw after around 10% casualties (of total brigade) in a combat troops vs. combat troops clash. The hostile forces then have the opportunity to pursue and possibly capture almost all of the rest of the brigade with little munitions expenditure, little losses and also less bloodshed than in the original contact.
Meanwhile, modern land battle exercises may go up to total annihilation of opposing combat forces because nobody fears for his life for real and thus the troops don't surrender en masse.
A bit more focus on taking (and then controlling, caring for) prisoners of war and pursuit in general would benefit our army wartime effectiveness.

2. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

There were periods in which this was tried, and in an exaggerated and actually ineffective way. Especially the captains of mercenary forces of the 16th and 17th centuries often attempted to create more theatre of war and do looting than doing actual battle. The expensive standing armies of the 18th century were also often (before the 1790's) used very cautiously with much manoeuvring with supply depot (fortress) locations in mind, unless Frederick II was in a hurry or Suvorov got involved.
On the other hand, the gigantic Soviet tank force of 1941 was in large part destroyed by enticing the Soviets to move their tank forces around till the poorly maintained tanks broke down and became largely useless for want of spare parts.

3. Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.

I dealt with the 'walled cities' topic before.

4. The rule is, not to besiege walled cities if it can possibly be avoided. The preparation of mantlets, movable shelters, and various implements of war, will take up three whole months; and the piling up of mounds over against the walls will take three months more.

I dealt with the 'walled cities' topic before.

5. The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege.

I dealt with the 'walled cities' topic before.

6. Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.

Subduing enemy forces quickly, but without battle, usually only worked when the enemy was extremely fragile in some way or utterly inferior to begin with. This sentence seems to be wishful thinking on part of Sun Tzu. It's more of an unrealistic ideal than a practical guidance and thus likely meant figuratively. He may have conveyed distaste here rather than advice or guidance.

7. With his forces intact he will dispute the mastery of the Empire, and thus, without losing a man, his triumph will be complete. This is the method of attacking by stratagem.

8. It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two.

The advice about surrounding does not square with the nearly contemporary Battle of Cannae (216 BC), where a numerically weaker force surrounded and almost completely destroyed an enemy army. Encirclement battles of annihilation were frequently done with armies only a little bigger or smaller (see also Battle of Tannenberg (1914)).
The modern rule of thumb for attacking by superior force is that the attacker should be 3:1 superior locally. This rule of thumb was often mentioned in writing, but it doesn't do justice to the complexity of the situations and I saw no evidence that army leaders really ever stuck to it in actual land warfare.
There was a military history study years ago that looked at historical battles and what determined victory. Numerical superiority proved to be no strong predictor of battle victory at all.
I interpret Sun Tzu's 'twice' part as being about a converging attack (or hammer and anvil movement) from different directions rather than about really separating the force.

9. If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him.

10. Hence, though an obstinate fight may be made by a small force, in the end it must be captured by the larger force.

This is the "Last Stand" problem. Such actions are frequently recalled as heroic, but rarely of much use. The events of 1942-1945 turned the "Last Stand" idea into a farce.
Sun Tzu clearly thought only of conventional state vs. state conflict or overtly fighting rebel armies here. Guerilla conflicts follow different rules. Guerilla wars aren't so much about destroying forces as about undermining the morale and cohesion and (for the government forces) about bolstering the same.

11. Now the general is the bulwark of the State; if the bulwark is complete at all points; the State will be strong; if the bulwark is defective, the State will be weak.

The importance of generals is not as prominent any more. The quality of generalship was probably for the last time of such prominent importance back in 1870 and even then the pre-war preparation of the officer corps was the really decisive factor.

12. There are three ways in which a ruler can bring misfortune upon his army:--

13. (1) By commanding the army to advance or to retreat, being ignorant of the fact that it cannot obey. This is called hobbling the army.

14. (2) By attempting to govern an army in the same way as he administers a kingdom, being ignorant of the conditions which obtain in an army. This causes restlessness in the soldier's minds.

He'd be rolling in his grave if he knew about the bureaucracy and red tape in a modern army.

15. (3) By employing the officers of his army without discrimination, through ignorance of the military principle of adaptation to circumstances. This shakes the confidence of the soldiers.

16. But when the army is restless and distrustful, trouble is sure to come from the other feudal princes. This is simply bringing anarchy into the army, and flinging victory away.

We haven't seen much of this post-1945 because the civilian leadership is almost always aware of its incompetence in regard to generalship. Princes of the time of Sun Tzu were probably raised from early years to become army leaders, and largely educated for it by the age of 15 when they were considered adults.

17. Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory: (1) He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. (2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. (3) He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks. (4) He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. (5) He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.

18. Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

The nature of all warfare is adversary. Sun Tzu neglects this by exaggerating the importance of the general he seeks to educate here. It is trivial that these two paragraphs are incorrect when the opposing general is just as competent or just as incompetent.

S O
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at 2 comments:

2020/09/12

Sun Tzu: The Art of War (II): Waging War

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I will use this easily accessible translation version
to comment on The Art of War, and I will pretend that Sun Tzu was indeed a historical person. 
Sun Tzu artist's impression from Qīnggōngdiàn Cánghuàběn
清宮殿藏畫本 / 清宫殿藏画本

II. Waging War

1. Sun Tzu said: In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.

The enormous costs of raising an army have been superseded by the enormous costs of maintaining an army. The purchasing of hardware is nowadays a rather small part of an army budget compared to the personnel expenses.
Even very expensive platforms such as self-propelled guns or tanks have to be designed and selected with a diligent calculation of life-cycle costs. A single crewmember difference (such as by the choice of using an autoloader or not) can decide which platform concept is the better choice, especially after taking into account overhead costs. It is a regrettable side-effect that army bureaucracies can manipulate this to make a favoured design look superior. The internal rate of return and other assumptions can be manipulated to reach a desired outcome.

2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

Industrial warfare tends to see a great improvement of the equipment over the course of a multi-year war rather than weapons getting 'dull'. A Me 262A-1a fighter of 1945 was a generation ahead of a Bf 109E-1 fighter of 1939 and a Panther D of 1945 a generation ahead to a Pzkpfw IVc of 1939, for example. Germany also had more Bf 109 fighters by the end of WW2 than at its start, in addition to other new fighter types. American of troops began the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003 with vehicles unfit for the purpose, and a few years later they had thousands of tailored MRAP vehicles.

We have developed propaganda if not mass hysteria and various forms of extremism to motivate and fanaticise troops. War weariness has happened (examples 1917/1918 front in France, crumbling Russian Army after the Brussilov offensives), but overall the modern way of waging war has learned to motivate for long war since the French Revolutionary Wars. Other wars (such as some modern occupations and 18th century cabinet wars) appear to keep going without good troops morale or much motivation, simply by political inertia and a continuing influx of vastly superior resources.

I mentioned the siege issue earlier.

3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

States have developed into much more robust and sophisticated concepts since. Up to the 18th century war financing war often depended on an accumulated crown treasure that would become depleted during wartime, leading to a reduction of active forces to a level that could be sustained with the ongoing revenues and some loans. Wars of the 20th century have been waged by states with existing public debt and little financial reserves. 
Total war has mobilised so much of a country's economy that enormous efforts such as 10+% of the population in arms have become feasible and been sustained for years.
Long-term public and private investments get neglected in major wars. A quasi-mobilized country may sustain a ridiculously expensive military power for decades, but this consumes substance and reduces economic growth. The Soviet Union and North Korea were examples of countries trying to compete with a huge (perceived) military threat despite having a much-inferior economic base, and the result was ruin.
Western countries with much military spending relative to their economy tend to neglect research and public infrastructure while growing the national public debt due to an unwillingness to acquire the needed money by taxation rather than by promises of returns with interest.

4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

This is a theoretical possibility and German leadership had to fear this in 1939/1940. A long and exhausting war with France and the UK would have left Germany ill-prepared to defend against the "Bolshevists" in the East.
Yet military history practice is that defeated countries have little left to take from them and "winning" countries have built up so much military strength during the war that such opportunistic attacks on exhausted states aren't much of a thing in industrialised warfare. Italy tried it in 1915, and clearly got the timing all wrong.

5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

Nowadays we don't have so much a problem with too ponderous campaigning, but rather with extremist expectations preventing a conclusion to the war. We might have a problem with too slow decision-making and order dissemination if we were to fight conventional land warfare, though.

6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

Except maybe the Mongols and countries not directly involved in the war, of course.
Again, the problem is not so much the will to get the war done quickly as the unwillingness to accept compromises to actually end it.

7. It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.

War isn't "profitable" to those involved. It's destructive and consuming, not productive. The last "profitable" European war regarding war booty or reparations ended in 1871. The last "profitable" European war regarding territorial gains ended in 1913 unless you count the Krajina campaign (1995) and annexation as a separate war.

8. The skillful soldier does not raise a second levy, neither are his supply-wagons loaded more than twice.

Sun Tzu offers a rule of thumb and essentially this rule of thumb is aimed against mission creep. It shall force the strategist to stick to the original idea for the extent of the war, which in turn requires the strategist to accept compromises to conclude the war fairly early on.

Loosely related; Nazi Germany raised army divisions in waves. The first four waves were pre-planned in peacetime, and already showed a decline in quality from 1st to 4th, especially in regard to motor vehicle equipment and increasing age of soldiers. An incompetent leadership more interested in delusions of nominal strength rather than in actual strength kept raising more divisions when the existing ones couldn't be filled up and supplied any more. There were a total of 35 waves.

9. Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy. Thus the army will have food enough for its needs.

Food is the least of the supply needs nowadays. Fuels and munitions are utterly dominant in modern conventional warfare. You can usually forage fodder in an invaded land, but it's a lot more tricky to source thermal sight replacement parts or 5.56x45 mm cartridges there. 
You should also understand that during the time of Sun Tzu the draft animals were requiring much more food than the soldiers. The soldiers' food was important for morale and for health, but the bulk and mass of the horse fodder was much more of a problem. Some armies - such as cavalry-dependent armies of Mongols - could not stay and operate in certain areas for long for want of horse fodder and grazing areas.

10. Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.

11. On the other hand, the proximity of an army causes prices to go up; and high prices cause the people's substance to be drained away.

Historical armies often resupplied themselves with food by tolerating an appendix of marketers. These marketers would source food and shoes and so on the in the vicinity of the army and sell everything to the troops and army-following civilians. The suddenly increased local demand led to the local inflation mentioned by Sun Tzu. The poorest civilians in the area would not be able to afford the goods that the troops demand as well.

12. When their substance is drained away, the peasantry will be afflicted by heavy exactions.

13,14. With this loss of substance and exhaustion of strength, the homes of the people will be stripped bare, and three-tenths of their income will be dissipated; while government expenses for broken chariots, worn-out horses, breast-plates and helmets, bows and arrows, spears and shields, protective mantles, draught-oxen and heavy wagons, will amount to four-tenths of its total revenue.

Some modern states such as the U.S. federal government are essentially giant insurance companies with a military, and very little else. This was even more extreme before government-run social insurances were invented in the late 19th century. The absolutist regimes of the 18th century often had more than 80% of their spending in the military realm (there was no real budgeting because they had no separation of powers with a legislative branch giving a budget to the executive branch).

15. Hence a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy's provisions is equivalent to twenty of one's own, and likewise a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one's own store.

Again, the characteristics of horse (or ox) cart logistics are important here. A rule of thumb was that horse-drawn carts could only supply an army reasonably well out to 250 km from a depot or port. The horses ate so much fodder that you would have to load the cart almost exclusively with fodder for a two-way trip if the distance was much greater. This made canals and seaports as well as drawing food and fodder locally so important.
Moreover, maintaining a huge army in one region required the dispatch of elements to source food and fodder from elsewhere. The disastrous Byzantine defeat at Manzikert (1071) was preceded by an unheard-of accumulation of forces and a necessity to send many troops away to get food from far away provinces.

16. Now in order to kill the enemy, our men must be roused to anger; that there may be advantage from defeating the enemy, they must have their rewards.

Troops taking war booty has rather fallen out of fashion. Ransoms for captured noblemen and captured professional soldiers were common in Europe for centuries, but this led to extremely undesirable actions when the troops were suddenly focused on prisoners rather than on carrying on the battle. One countermeasure was a commanded massacre of prisoners (Swiss, Englishmen in the 100 Years War), but that led to obviously undesirable repercussions.

17. Therefore in chariot fighting, when ten or more chariots have been taken, those should be rewarded who took the first. Our own flags should be substituted for those of the enemy, and the chariots mingled and used in conjunction with ours. The captured soldiers should be kindly treated and kept.

The Romans knew a special medal for the soldier who arrived at the wall of a stormed city first. The greed for such rather immaterial prestige rewards is still getting exploited with medals. It did lead to some very undesirable excessively aggressive actions. Officers should probably be excluded from such incentives schemes, for they were prone to dangerous medal-horny behaviour in the 19th and 20th century.

18. This is called, using the conquered foe to augment one's own strength.

Captured gear is very important to the side with the inferior economic resources in industrial warfare. Germany did it extensively in WW2 and some guerilla movements built their equipment strategy almost entirely on capturing or buying (from corrupt troops) government equipment.

19. In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.

This seems obvious, but keep in mind that the Neocons believed they could wage half a dozen wars in the time they actually ended up blundering in Iraq and Afghanistan. The wish for a quick end to a war means nothing if you aren't willing to accept compromises.
Moreover, we would rather say "mission" now than "victory".

20. Thus it may be known that the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people's fate, the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril.

Not really, but this was already covered in part I.


S O
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at 2 comments:

2020/09/05

Link drop September 2020

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https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/08/03/Virgin-Galactic-unveils-designs-for-Mach-3-supersonic-aircraft/1051596456156/

The Mach angle of Mach 3 is almost exactly 20°, for Mach 2 it's exactly 30°.
This means a Mach 2 wing should be swept back (or delta) by about 90°-30°=60° and a Mach 3 wing should be swept back (or Delta) at 90°-20°=70°. The artist's impression does look like 50...60° delta or even less to me.

It would be weird to develop a Mach 3 aircraft with such a wing, for there are compressibility and shock wave issues. An alternative to much wing sweep is to make the wing extremely thin (which would disqualify it for the mounting of engines or carrying substantial internal fuel), but this hasn't been done much since the F-104.
For comparison; the XB-70 Valkyrie (a bomber meant to cruise at Mach 3) had a compromise wing sweep of 65.5°. 

So I suppose that aircraft may exist by 2035 (though unlikely), but I strongly suppose it won't look anything like that artist's impression given in the link.


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I did not fact check this. I think the data is to be read as difference to 2nd quarter of 2019.

Ridiculous side effect: The NATO members military spending (measured in %GDP) grew rapidly in 2020 due to the pandemic. That's how stupid that metric is.

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edition.cnn.com/2020/08/20/us/armored-vehicle-abandoned-trnd/index.html

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A few per cent would not matter, but 35% not vaccinated is too much for herd immunity even if a few per cent points were already infected. The despicable amount of fearmongering and disinformation as well as an equally-despicable tolerance towards idiots in public has led to this situation. I meant to write that I fear that Europe may have a similar problem. Sadly, even a cursory search yields that according to one poll, the figure is not 35%, but 48% in Germany.

This is horrible.

WE HAVE TO END THE TOLERATION OF IDIOTS AND LIARS. Push the idiots and liars (fearmongers, hatemongers, professional disinformants) back into the holes whence they came from about five years ago! Sunlight has to be purgatory to them again! Smack them (figuratively) whenever they show up! Let it be clear to everyone that idiots and liars are socially ostracized in public, not tolerated. IDIOTS AND LIARS HURT OUR NATIONS. To keep tolerating them is causing self-inflicted harm.

Clarification: I think the way to go regarding a properly tested and cleared vaccine against such a pandemic is to get vaccinated if you aren't part of a risk group for which no vaccination is recommended by experts. The other people (who can get vaccinated) shall vaccinate in part to protect such vulnerable people. To not get vaccinated this way is akin to a failure to assist millions of people in danger.
I do not consider any inadequately tested or dubiously promoted/cleared vaccine such as the short Russian man's advisable unless there's an even much more deadly pandemic than currently.

(I wrote this section before an international poll yielded a different result, with roughly 1/3 of Germans saying no to a vaccine.)

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https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/18/aws_toyota_alliance/
My car insurance salesman wanted to talk me into accepting a small tracking emitter for a  supposedly better price of the insurance. I wanted nothing of the sort for privacy reasons, but he was obviously trained with phrases to react. He did finally shut up about it when I told him I had been member in a privacy advocacy initiative before moving. Car insurers really, really want to track your driving behaviour, and it's not a nutty conspiracy theory to think that they could get your location data through some scheme that way. 
This is something that customers should fight against for privacy reasons, and so should the national automotive driver's clubs. In worst case we should disable the 'phone home' hardware physically. I understand that's not even feasible (because of the need for software updates by mobile phone networks) in at least one brand, though.

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This is an entire blog basically telling you the same thing as the book of the same title does. I recommend it (again, I think), especially in light of what I wrote about kleptocracy-plutocracy recently. I do especially recommend it as literature to racists. I linked to the last page because reading chronologically is advised. They spilled the best beans early on.

Economic theory has many explanations for economic prosperity and economic misery that the public still don't understand, and many of the publicly-made comments of economics laymen sound about as educated and useful as a voodoo chant does to a physicist.
An example of a particularly widespread myth is about the role of the Marshall Plan which was really more of a super-expensive PR campaign than the driver of economic miracles, as I laid out a long time ago. It was a very nice and somewhat helpful gesture, but don't let it mis-educate you on the effectiveness of foreign money infusions into crippled economies.

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The human pilot flew in the simulator against the computer pilot and lost, 5:0. It's been established knowledge for years that computer pilots are superior in air combat IF they have full information and even though the competing human pilot does not suffer from the accelerations of his own flight manoeuvres.
Call me when American combat pilots can consistently discriminate between combatants and non-combatants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haska_Meyna_wedding_party_airstrike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airstrike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azizabad_airstrike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granai_airstrike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Sangin_airstrike

Maybe the computer would stick to his mission and not become bored and kill-horny. The 'they shot in the air, so I had to return to self-defend myself after being safe the entire time' line of fake justification for mass homicide would not be used by a computer.

That being written, I'd like to emphasize that I am in favour of limiting offensive air/ground air power in funding and in its roles and munitions because I consider much of the current offensive air power to be less cost-efficient than well-structured land forces in a continental European context.
The modern allocation of resources between the armed services seems to be too much influenced by the American experience of 'we can't achieve much on the ground, so let's bomb them' from Korea, Vietnam and their illegal cruise missile non-diplomacy.

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Anybody who is interested and who wasn't blinded by propaganda so far already knows about the systemic and collective treason, I suppose. It's nothing new, really. Reagan and his bunch were already traitors colluding with Iran, some of them even went to prison for it (and subsequently became heroes of the right wing for their crime). There's a crooks, liars and traitor party in the United States, and it does at times control the federal government. Foreign powers have to accept and some still adapt to this reality.

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The U.S. sends a new ambassador to Germany, Douglas MacGregor. He's not an overt and all-out asshole like Grenell, but there are some issues nevertheless. He's in hot water for racism and is inappropriately friendly to Russia.

Anyway, he was a bit of a celebrity and 'military reformer' (actually military reform advocate without power) around 1997-2004 due to two books. Some U.S.Army reorganisations towards a brigade structure may have happened in part due to his efforts.

His "Breaking the Phalanx" book of 1997 was considered the work of a great military thinker for years among Americans (only among them afaik), and it bugged me. Eventually, somebody helped me understand the hype by pointing out that the things he proposed weren't novel, but would at least be improvements to the U.S.Army.
He did really not propose anything extraordinary; just a brigade structure that wouldn't have been an extraordinary idea in 1960's Germany paired with a naive and typical American overemphasis on battlefield rotary aviation. I didn't re-read the book recently, but IIRC it was typical American in its emphasis on resources and firepower rather than ideas for finesse.

Back to more recent activity, he's been a frequent commentator/contributor at a right wing propaganda TV network's show that has been nicknamed "white power hour" for a hundred reasons. (It's one of two TV shows on that network that earned this nickname, so don't get confused.)

I would reject him as ambassador if I was the German minister of foreign affairs, but I would not have tolerated Grenell, either.
There was a time when a very competent American ambassador to Germany was able to fluently converse in German and do interviews in German TV in German. You didn't need to like all American foreign policy at the time, but at least the ambassador was competent, diplomatic and relevant in non-destructive ways.

S O
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