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 ball bigger 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 rifle 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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