On people going nuts and supporting Hamas

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We've seen some strange behaviour by some people in the past weeks. Some people who were famous for something (often advocacy) began to side not just with Palestinians/Arabs, but even with Hamas.

It reminded me of an old blog post of mine:

/2016/04/thinking-on-military-affairs-and-going.html

I think you need to be a certain kind of person to dare leave the conventional consensus and be an outspoken champion for a change of the status quo. This readiness to turn against the mainstream doesn't necessarily correlate with great judgment, of course.

All those gold bugs are plain idiots when it comes to economics and monetary policy in particular, for example. They get every single it 180° wrong and don't care that all the evidence is against them. Still, they are people who dare to turn against the mainstream opinion on money.

So people may have become famous for some advocacy against the mainstream position, and maybe they were right on that one - but that doesn't mean their opinion is a smart one on another topic that they chose to become outspoken about.

Just as famous businessmen are usually delusional when they think they can give good economic policy advice.

Yes, I'm self-aware that I wade into many different topics and am greatly at risk of being wrong in one or another. See this about that.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Armoured raids fuel logistics

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Let's have a quick thought experiment: How deep could an armoured battlegroup raid (including a fighting withdrawal)?

The Leopard A4 has a "road range" of approx. 500 km (it differs a little from vehicle to vehicle, and this isn't comparable to the range metrics of a private car). The first approximation is that the raid could go 250 km deep.

Leopard 2A4 (c) böhringer friedrich (unchanged)

 

But the raid wouldn't be all on roads, so let's use the mixed surface range from the Swedish trials that I wrote about ages ago. The practical range was then 167 km. Later Leopard 2 versions are all heavier, so they would probably not even reach 150 km in such a test. So let's say the 2nd approximation is that the raid could go about 83 km deep.

Such a raid would not go linear, of course. IIRC a rule of thumb from WW2 operations was that you drive 100 km to get 50 km forward. The third approximation is thus that the raid could go about 42 km deep.

There was an old rule of thumb from aviation to always have 25% extra fuel in order to not run out of fuel in case of headwinds, navigational errors - stuff happens. Let's apply a 20% safety margin to the armoured raid - so one 1/6th less range. The fourth approximation is thus that the raid goes to a depth of merely 35 km.

A tank raid may be unattractive - who wants to give up terrain, after all? So maybe one is more interested in just advancing - but you cannot advance to the limits of your fuel without excessive risks, so an armoured battlegroup advance would still not go 2x35=70 km, more likely the limit is near 50 km.  This figure could be pushed up by driving more on road as the Russians did in February 2022 (risky and not promising), but not beyond 100 km.

A tank is famously characterized by protected firepower with mobility on the battlefield; the famous triad of firepower, mobility and protection (Germans sometimes add "Führungsfähigkeit" as 4th pillar, which is about human action, sensors and communications).

Sadly, the neglect of the variable "range" in "mobility" limits its mobility to the battlefield. Operational actions beyond the battlefield into areas without battle-ready opposing forces is hardly possible without the support of fuel-carrying logistic vehicles. So how many offroad-capable (8x8 or 10x10) logistics vehicles with diesel fuel would accompany the battlegroup? How many at least bulletproofed such vehicles (protection also for the diesel fuel, not just for the cabin) do we have? AFAIK the count is zero.

The consequences of fighting opposing forces of low capability in sandy regions and especially of training on tiny unrealistic army training grounds are merciless. Logistics is about supplying, carrying and living off the land. We need to carry more fuel for more mobility, for else even a frontline breakthrough could not be exploited decisively.

The German military of WW2 was sometimes unable to stop Red Army offensives by fighting the spearheads and resorted to accelerating that they ran out of supplies instead, moving the culminating point in their favour. Ground attack aircraft did better shoot up supply transport on the road than to try destroy the very difficult tank targets in the field. American logistics vehicles deliveries (Lend-Lease) allowed the Soviets to push the culminating point farther ahead of their railheads. This is how you think about operational art when you don't have overwhelming firepower, one side has the ability to break through and you're not mentally restricted to tactical peacetime training on small training areas.

 

related:

/2015/06/supply-flow-demands-and-logistical.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Too simple minds

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Humans have a troublesome tendency.

They do often times identify one evil, and then follow a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" policy due to a "the enemy of evil is good" logic. That's obviously untrue.

Sometimes the enemy of evil is evil as well. Sometimes someone whom you identified as the bad guy in one context is the good guy in another context. Vice versa

Particularly zealous people seem to be particularly vulnerable to this (I suppose it's a) logical fallacy.

An example is Noam Chomsky, who correctly identifies some evil in Reagan's foreign policies and then stuck with the mind set that the U.S. is an evil imperial power. Worse; he all-too often depicts adversaries of the U.S. as good when they're clearly not.

Another example is Julian Assange. He helped to expose war crimes of the Obama administration and was opposed harshly by the same. This turned him into a hater of the Democrats, without any consideration about whether the Republicans wouldn't have been just as mean, if not worse - both in Iraq and to him.

There's a similar nonsensical illogic at play regarding the conflict in the Levante.

Some people (who am I kidding? Almost all people!) appear to be incapable of managing enough information in the mind in parallel to think of political actors as separate of the people as a whole or to maintain the thought that being victim in one context isn't in conflict with being perpetrator in another context.

And don't get me started on how incompetent the notion of war crimes is being handled. Hardly anyone ever read the Geneva Conventions (officers should know the basics, and I can at least say that I read much of the full text of the conventions).

Simple bogeyman thinking appears to rule. Most people appear to pick one hunter-gatherer clan to side with and that other hunter-gatherer clan is eeeevil!

Exceptions are being treated as if they were inconsistent or hypocrites, while I respect them for at least being able to think a bit more advanced than a caveman - even if the conclusions aren't mine.

The worst are of course the racists, who simply force their whole racism bollocks on the topic.

- - - - - - - - -

So in case anyone is ever confused about my stance:

1. Israel has to leave the occupied territories and go back to its pre-1967 borders. The state of Israel is only legitimate within the pre-1967 borders.
2. The U.S. is at fault for #1 not happening due to its unethical UNSC vetoes. It does thus deserve a major share of the blame for the mess.
   
3. Any talk about pre-1967 borders being indefensible is bollocks. It's militarily untrue and it doesn't matter anyway. Singapore isn't exactly defensible either, but that doesn't mean it gets to steal land from Malaysia. The security interests of one country do never justify territorial expansion or occupation of foreign lands. No exceptions!
   
4. The Geneva Conventions bind the signatory power Israel. Violations thereof are war crimes.
5. Intentional killing, injuring, torturing or abducting civilians is a crime (at least in customary international law). It's obvious that all parties do or did at some point commit this crime.
   
6. Israel has a right to close its borders with Gaza, but a naval blockade of Gaza just because Gaza was ruled by a disliked political faction was never legitimate.
7. There's no violence followed by counterviolence in the Levante conflict any more. It's all counterviolence by now.
8. Assassinations of non-combatants or against a country without state of war are illegal and deserve sanctions.
9. Casual and habitual bombing of foreign countries at will is not acceptable, not legal, never legitimate and must not be normalised.
   
10. The European politicians have been worthless  in the Levante conflict since 1967 (after when France ceased to export weapons to Israel in reaction to it attacking neighbours with French weapons). That's the nicest way to put it that I've come up with.
    
11. Being a victim in one context does not authorise being a perpetrator in any context.
    
12. The talk of "Staatsräson" in Germany is bollocks. The German government has to serve German interests, not foreign ones. The word "Staatsräson" or "Staatsraison" does not appear in the constitution, nor does the word "Israel". All this "Staatsräson" talk is bollocks of the same high grade as the "Supergrundrecht" bollocks. Keep in mind #10.
    

 

The conflict in the Levante is a big mess. Only fools find any "good" party there. Our (Western) handling of the conflict is an embarrassment. It shows the widespread failure of intellect and the all-encompassing worthlessness of Western politicians in this conflict.

The best path to cooling the conflict in the Levante down does include an end to the U.S. veto policy in the UNSC, which is not in sight. Democrats stick to Israel regardless of what its government does (short of nuclear genocide) because they don't want to lose the votes of New York City. Republicans stick to Israel regardless of what its government does (limit unclear) because they have a strong pseudo-Christian nutjob faction in their lying moron-dominated party that insists on supporting Israel due to one or another moronic bible interpretation.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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