About optimizing and scale

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There's a curious thing happening when I do thought experiments, trying to optimise things to the best of my knowledge, processing ability (and preferences):

Answers ends up being very concise, clear and elegant when I look at the macro level.

Answers often end up very detailed and non-standardised when I look at the micro level.

This is for the same problem, such as "What should have been done about German anti-tank challenges by early 1942?".

I noticed this pattern repeatedly. 

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This leads to a mystery: Which set of answers is actually the better one?

The micro set could be better because it's taking into account details

The macro set could be better because it's taking into account the big picture. 

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I do suspect that armed bureaucracies mostly apply the micro approach because top leadership rarely forces elegant, decisive decisions that fit the macro answer pattern. They delegate and lots of subordinates ponder about micro level problems, coming up with many detailed answers.

 

IMO we could look at macro level to devise answers, then take the micro level into account to see whether the answers are feasible. To look at the micro level for more options leads away from standardisation, elegance, simplicity and in the end - it (likely) leads away from efficiency. 

 

This might be part of the answer to why armed bureaucracies fail to standardise vehicles, munitions and even training properly. It may thus in turn be part of the answer why armed bureaucracies have such very high costs.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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A look back: My theses as of 2014

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I had a summary of Defence & Freedom (my) theses back in (and up to) 2014:

/2014/05/blog-defence-and-freedom-theses.html 

Let's use that to see how good or bad that list looks today.

 

2007 looks fine to me, save for the fortifications thing. Field fortifications wouldn't work against Westerners, but Russians are incapable enough that they work against them.

2008 I suppose opinions vary about the counter-piracy thing. 

2009 I suppose my take on IFVs is still an outlier, despite the failures of BMPs in Ukraine. 

2010 looks fine. 

2011 The low force density thing is very debatable in light of how the Russo-Ukraine War went down, though I was rather thinking of a different scenario.

2012 The remarks on deconfliction, navies, army aviation and air force combat aviation are still outlier opinions. 

2013 I know the opinion on submarines is still an outlier. 

2014 They actually began getting ACV six years later, albeit I'll say those are underwhelming.

 

So 57 theses, only three of them were kinda (though not clearly) refuted by events and six are still very much outlier opinions (even though somewhat supported by events, but events did not change majority opinions).

 

I actually expected the list to have fared worse.

Maybe I should write a bit about the many "I told you so" theses. 

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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American-Clausewitzian thought falls short on the strategy level

 

So, here's the issue that makes American-Clausewitzian thought rather useless for strategy:

They write about winning a war 1vs1 or coalition vs. coalition and do not properly account for escalation.

Suppose somebody would design a Clausewitzian campaign against Russia. I've just today seen an article by a prolific article writer who wrote a lot of nonsense about that. Still, going with the American-Clausewitzian nonsense that Americans write and think of Schwerpunkt as the one thing you need to knock out to win (that's not really what Clausewitz wrote about):

You would go for either Putin or the fuel industry (which Ukraine did, but not enough for decisive effect, at least not decisive so far). 

Why would this not be done in a decisive way in the year 2026?

Fear of escalation. 

You had to fear adding more enemies in previous wars, such as Germany adding the U.S. as enemy in 1917 by conducting unrestricted submarine war against the UK*.

In 2026, you fear escalation by Russian nukes instead.

So in order to dare to press that "I win" button, you need to first overcome the fear of escalation. You might position your own nukes to deter first nuke use by the enemy, you might kidnap the enemy leader's only daughter, you might position lots of potential allies who would join the fray if powers join your enemy or you might simply have 'big balls' (something that sounds more like Sun Tzu than von Clausewitz).

There are "I win" buttons, military history and military technology leave hardly any doubt about that. You first need to make them usable, relevant - or else all talk about them is pointless blathering by people who only fool themselves and a few others into thinking they're big military thinkers.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: compounded by a huge British hatemongering campaign in American press that still leaves its mark more than 100 years later with the "huns" thing and the myth about Germans having been unusually militaristic 

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Simple WW2 infantry regiment arms

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I keep looking at historical army equipment and it's fascinating how simple the equipment even of an entire infantry regiment can be.

  

An example from WW2:

All an infantry regiment really needed (if I break it down to minimum required quantity of arms types) was:

• rifle
• submachinegun
• universal machinegun
• recoilless gun
• mortar

This can be further reduced with an automatic closed bolt action such as StG 45 had (a late WW2 prototype weapon, but not out of reach technology-wise by early WW2):

• battle rifle
• universal machinegun
• recoilless gun
• mortar

 

(c) 

Verein der Freunde und Förderer der Wehrtechnischen Studiensammlung Koblenz e. V.

Verein der Freunde und Förderer der Wehrtechnischen Studiensammlung Koblenz e. V.

 

(c) Pollyanna1919

source https://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt07/recoilless.html

 

source https://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/ruwiki/1414802

  

(Keep in mind mines, demolition charges, rifle grenades and hand grenades count as munitions rather than weapons. Flare guns were a tool rather than a weapon outside of German armed forces. Pistols were not a serious weapon post-1871 and irrelevant by WW2.)

 

Moreover, recoilless gun and mortar could be had in one calibre (90...120 mm smoothbore), sharing some fuze and grenade designs and not needing any expensive rifled barrels. A 105...120 mm smoothbore recoilless gun would excel at using shaped charges for anti-tank work out to about 500 m distance (moving target, 1 km against standing tank). A rifled one would instead be able to penetrate 100+ mm of RHA with a HESH/HEP approach.

 

The whole arsenal of such a force could have been produced in backyard workshops save for the supply of unfinished steel parts including barrels. (Again, munitions excluded, but TNT, mercury fulminate and cordite are enough and all simple 19th century tech.) No extraordinary skill was needed, one fully qualified gunsmith, one metalworks machining instructor and maybe one welder would have sufficed to train the entire workforce via snowball system. The only extraordinary production tech was the then-new stamping (particularly for the StG45 - modern machinery, but usable by unskilled labour). 

    

The most difficult equipment to produce for such an infantry regiment were probably the radios with their rechargeable batteries. The typewriters were quite complicated, too. And then there were the motor vehicles, but those were still optional during WW2.

 

You may think something is missing - air defence. Actually, effective air defence (better than ordinary machineguns) was hardly ever present in WW2 infantry regiments. A well-rounded one could have had something like the Madsen 20 mm M/38 for keeping ground attack aircraft at 1.5 km distance and dealing with nimble armoured cars, of course.

 

BTW, historical WW2 infantry regiment arsenals weren't that much more complicated. Again excluding pistols and flare guns, about seven weapons types was an ordinary diversity of arms types. 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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The impending crash

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I leaned a bit out of the window and anticipated doom on Twitter:

https://x.com/DefenceFreedom/status/2016438597230961078

The U.S.' public debt amounts to about 38 trillion dollars. About 9 T $ need to be refinanced in 2026 and about 2 T $ new debt needs to be financed in 2026.

The monetary and foreign policies of the lying moron discourage foreigners from buying dollars or lend money. So who is going to finance the U.S.' excesses? The U.S. treasury ("printing" money) is the prime candidate.

2027 will be worse. Less debt to refinance, but the refinancing of 2026 will only be possible at much higher interest rates (and probably inflation-indexing), so the debt service will be crushing. The deficit may be around 3 T $ in 2027.

Yes, I know about fiscal years not being the same as calendar years, but I am writing about the financing of the budget during the calendar year here.

Back to the money "printing": Money creation to fund a substantial share of a country's government leads to high inflation, possibly hyperinflation. The degre of economic literacy at the top of the U.S. government already led to attacks on the central bank's independence.

A demand for low interest rates by the central bank is an almost obvious policy to come, so there's no way the central bank can credibly fight inflation.

Keep in mind trillions of $ are likely to flow back to the U.S., as their holders fear loss of value. 

Trade cannot cope with this. The dollar will become extremely weak. So extremely weak that inflation of imported goods will provoke exchange rate interventions, burning foreign exchange reserves for no gain.

A weak dollar may be good for exporting U.S. businesses, BUT the U.S. lacks the economy and skilled labour force to quickly expand its industry within two or three years to exploit an export-friendly exchange rate quickly.

Something else will be very quick, even near-instant: Importing will be very expensive with a weak dollar. This may wreck industries that have globalised supply chains.

The U.S. was on a bad path trade-wise for about 25 years already. Now there's a cabal of idiots in charge that don't understand that keeping what you have is demanding at that level, throw away what they have and thus become the trigger of collapse.

Unsustainable waste such as the insanely big military budget gets grown instead of cut back. Foreign lenders lose motivation to fund the U.S. lifestyle of living off credit. The USD loses its dominant reserve currency status.

The chicken comes home to roost. They make America small again.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Poland-Lithuania won't take over the once-dominant role of the U.S.. China will do & in ~20 years India will challenge China. Most people in Poland-Lithuania will enjoy a nice life in wealth & security - if the climate allows for it.

True prosperity comes form work and avoiding waste, not from living off cedit. Superpower or even only Great Power status is not needed for prosperity, as evidenced by countries such as Luxembourg, Brunei, Singapore.

Americans may have a fine life once they reach an approximately sustainable path, including taxing the rich for real again. Their next 5-8 years won't be nice, though. 

I disinvested from a MSCI World ETF two days ago. It was always the plan to not try to beat the market, but I wanted to get rid of the extreme exposure to the USD and the U.S. and am moving to a MSCI World ex US ETF.

The U.S. trade balance deficit, federal budget deficit and military spending were on about one level for a while, hinting that the U.S. actually cannot sustain its consumption (which includes the government consumption of military power expenditures) without perpetual willingness of the rest of the world to give lend money. The lying moron's policies are now the trigger to end this willingness - and it was always ridiculous to assume it would be perpetual anyway.

The upside? The PRC is most unlikely to make a violent move to get Taiwan in the next three years. It can instead wait for the Americans to collapse fiscally and economically. Purges in the armed forces to ensure loyalty tot he Fascist regime as well as the stupidity at cabinet level will reduce military capability beyond any budget crunch that's going to happen when the economic base falters.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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NATO doesn't look so eternal any more.

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I'd like to direct your attention to a 2014 blog post due to recent events:

"How NATO changed the perception of what an alliance is and does" 

/2014/02/how-nato-changed-perception-of-what.html

 

Systems sometimes just seem stable until they collapse suddenly. Dicatorships with thier often sudden demise are a good example.

NATO seemed to be a truly exceptional alliance with no parallel in history, but now it seems as if this uniqueness - if not even NATO itself - may collapse. 

There's still an alliance organisaiton, but there's now much distrust. Hungarians, Slovakians, Czechs and Americans are no more trustworthy.

The perception of NATO as eternal is shattered. There's much public talk about setting up a European alternative (Art. 42 Lisbon Treaty already exists, but people keep ignoring it) without the 5th cohorts of Putin and in part to protect AGAINST the U.S..

 

Sadly, we've had dismal quality politicians at the helm in European countries for ~45 years, so there's little hope for a swift, decisive and sensible reorientation of defence policy in Europe. 

 

related: 

/2016/11/leaving-nato.html

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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