Optimal AAA calibres in WW2 and today

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Here's a shipload of hindsight: The optimal anti-air artillery calibres of World War Two.

7.62...7.92 mm machineguns were rather ineffective. There were some aircraft with thin armour plating during WW1 already. Such armour plating provided good protection at as little as 300 m altitude, for the bullets quickly lost energy by climbing against gravity and drag. The use of twin or quad mountings didn't help much. 

12.7...13.2 mm machineguns were little better. Their effective range was around 500 m, but they had the target in range for so little time that they depended rather on lucky hits to achieve much. The use of quad mountings didn't help much. It's irritating that the Soviets nevertheless introduced 14.5 mm anti-air machineguns based on their anti-tank rifle calibre after WW2, including multiple barrel mounts. Their usefulness was mostly limited to anti-helicopter work and the slightly bigger 23 mm twin gun (a Cold War design) was vastly better.

A single Czechoslovakian 15 mm gun design was of marginal relevance. It was too much gun and mounting for the modest effectiveness of the calibre.

The first really effective AAA calibre was 20 mm. It's widely recognised as the smallest calibre for a useful high explosive round with a proper fuse. 20 mm weapons weighed about double what 12.7 mm weapons weighed during WW2, but their weight was still bearable. 20 mm quad mounts were very heavy, but it was possible to devise a 20 mm light AAA pack gun. The calibre was also very effective in ground support and against merely bulletproofed AFVs (most early WW2 tanks and late in WW2 still the scout vehicles and halftracks). This was the best calibre to equip infantry regiments or even infantry battalions, but this was hardly ever done. The result was that the infantry was largely without proper air defences, but at least the infantry was fairly good at using camouflage, concealment and cover. This happens to have been the reason why 20 mm would have been sufficient for an infantry AAA capability: Its up to 2 km effective range covered approx. the distance at which aviators could still spot infantry targets save for road marches and field fortifications on open fields.

There were some 25 and 28 mm AA guns in France, Japan, Soviet Union and the U.S., but they did not earn good reputations. Japanese 25 mm suffered from sluggish mountings and a ceiling that permitted very accurate level bombing against anchored or moored ships from a mere 7,000 ft altitude.

The next really convincing calibre was 30 mm. The German 30 mm HEIT (high explosive incendiary tracer) Minengeschosse were designed for a giant explosive charge with added incendiary side effect. One hit usually sufficed to shoot down a single engine aircraft. Even the rugged 4-engine B-17 was said to usually be doomed after four 30 mm HEIT hits. This was in part because of the huge blast effect an in part because the fuse was designed to explode just after penetrating the skin, so it would explode inside a wing or stabiliser. 30 mm wasn't only a sweet spot for its destructive power leap over 20 mm. It was also a sweet spot because the late WW2 Mk 103 showed that a huge rate of fire (for a light AAA at the time) and a high muzzle velocity was doable with this calibre without excessive weight of the whole system. The effective range was greater than 2 km in the AAA role with its muzzle velocity without needing a muzzle velocity at 900+ m/s, which would have worn out the barrel too quickly. So IMO a 3 cm AAA of about the Mk 103's weapon design (with a suitable mount) would have been the perfect light AAA for divisional air defence and SPAAGs. It would have reached higher than 2 cm guns, pushing the threats farther up to altitudes (8,000 ft and more) from where the rear elements of a division (esp. artillery positions) would be much less recognisable. Hardly any 3 cm AAA was used during WW2.

Next, there's the 37...40 mm group. These guns had vastly inferior rate of fire to 3 cm Mk 103, but the destructive power of late war HE-rich grenades left almost no chance to single engine aircraft with even only one hit and approached one-shot kill power against medium bombers. Moreover, they had increased reach than smaller calibres. The altitude of 10,000 ft was considered to be safe from them during WW2. Some of their fuse designs self-destructing at about that distance anyway, so greater theoretical ballistic ceilings didn't matter. This calibre was the best fit for naval guns. It pushed level bombers so high that they became too inaccurate even against anchored or moored individual ships. They made twin-engine skip and torpedo bombing inefficient or (if they got close) suicidal. It was a powerful-enough calibre for motor torpedo boats to fend off motor gun boats. The effective firepower against ground attack aircraft at short distances was certainly vastly inferior to the much higher practical rate of fire of 3 cm Mk 103, though. I'd like to add that the British 2 pounder went back to WW1 and this explains its poor muzzle velocity, which rendered it rather unimpressive against aircraft passing by. The 4 cm Bofors of the late 1920's was the best and earliest really good gun in this calibre and would still (even with 1980's munitions) be a very good AAA in face of the cheap cruise missiles used in the Russo-Ukrainian War.*

The 45...47 mm calibre group was a bust. The Soviets used it on ships, the Czechs had some developed, but these guns had a terrible rate of fire and marginal advantages over 4 cm.

The 50...57 mm group began with a German 50 mm gun meant to close a gap between 10,000 and 15,000 ft altitude at which 37 mm was ineffective and heavy AAA (88 mm) not yet effective-enough because of high angular speeds and rapid change of necessary time fuse settings. This was a sweet spot for level bombing during WW2 and also relevant over the Reich because of the poor service ceiling of the Short Stirling night bomber. Eventually, the 50 mm calibre proved to be too weak and Germany advanced to develop a 55 mm gun, but only completed prototypes. Its combination of calibre and muzzle velocity indicates that it would likely not have covered the 10,000 to 15,000 ft gap. 55 mm was considered to be capable of reliably one-hit kill even a 4engined bomber such as a B-17 or Lancaster.** A properly-developed 55 to 57 mm gun would have proved very useful for protecting railheads, railway stations, bridges and (against night bombers) cities during WW2. Basically, it would have been the perfect defence against light and medium bombers and heavy bombers used in typical medium bomber mission profiles (= level bombing mostly between 10,000 and 15,000 ft).

75...76.2 mm guns were often leftovers from the First World War, especially in France and the UK. Even the best guns in this calibre group lacked the ceiling to defend against American-style B-17/B-24 attacks due to the bombers' turbochargers permitting attack altitudes of about 27,000 ft. The calibre had such a low lethality with a time fused fragmentation shell that all the optical tracking, searchlight, radar rangefinding, computing and automated fuse-setting equipment of a heavy AAA battery would have been wasted on it. That is, unless one uses point detonation fuses and hopes for direct hits (then you need no automated fuse setters). There would still have been the ceiling issue, but the guns would have been deadly against large aircraft (medium bomber and bigger) within their reach at much lower expense than the next group. Everything changed for Western Allies' 76.2 mm AAA at about the end of WW2 when VT (proximity) fusing suddenly turned a 76.2 mm twin into a more effective counter-kamikaze defence than a quad-40 mm mount. 

85...90 mm guns were in another sweet spot that gave just enough ceiling (great ceiling if very high barrel wear was accepted) against almost every threat. The munition expenditure was terribly high per kill until late in war when Germany used impact fusing against large bombers*** and Americans created incomparably more expensive and sophisticated 90 mm proximity fuses that made the calibre effective against any target in range provided the fuse was not jammed and no ground features or waves triggered the fuses early. The calibre was used on some warships, but its usefulness against warships was limited to shooting illumination rounds at night. The shell was simply too weak against ships.

100...128 mm calibres were powerful with their fragmentation effect, but very expensive, bulky and heavy. The saving grace for this calibre group was the dual purpose potential; you could equip warships with these guns and plausibly use them both against aircraft and against any unarmoured ships at useful distances. Even 127 and 128 mm calibres were disappointing against unarmoured ships, but still accepted as barely good-enough for a naval DP gun. The Americans successfully used 127 mm guns as DP guns in the secondary artillery (against small ships and up to light cruisers) and tertiary artillery (heavy AAA) role, whereas Germany stuck with a 150 mm secondary and 105 mm tertiary/heavy AAA separation that yielded less guns for either role. The American 127 mm DP guns were unusually quick-loading and the first calibre to receive the new VT (radio proximity) fuses. Naval heavy AAA and DP guns were hardly worth their effort as AAA guns if not equipped with such VT fuses.

The Royal Navy used 133 mm (5.25 inch) guns as DP guns, but they were much less successful than the American 127 mm guns due to more sluggish mounts, smaller maximum elevation and lower rate of fire.

150 mm and bigger calibre heavy AAA and super-heavy AAA existed in marginal quantities with examples in Germany and in Japan. IMO such calibres should be limited to firing shrapnel rounds against incoming skip bombers and torpedo bombers from a super destroyer's or light cruiser's main guns (138...155 mm calibres, not real DP guns). These guns were so big, bulky and expensive that there was simply no realistic case for them being cost-efficient in a land-base AAA role. They were unsuitable for 85...90° maximum elevation naval turret mounting, so their AAA niche was a secondary capability of shooting at incoming aircraft within their elevation range (~30°) that was commonly provided for anti-ship fires. The USN introduced a class of light cruisers which had true 155 mm DP guns, but that proved to be inefficient and unsuccessful.

Surface-to-air missiles: Let's face it. The missile tech, guidance and fusing was simply not mature enough by WW2, but the experiments and the experience with the leap in aircraft speeds possible with turbojets showed that surface-to-air missiles would replace heavy AAA after WW2.

 

So all in all, I see for the WW2 period three different sweet spots for light AAA calibres (20, 30 and 37...40 mm), each dependent on tactical niches and two sweet spots for heavy AAA calibres (88...90 and mostly 127/128 mm with 100...105 mm being a very AAA-biased DP compromise), separated in land-based heavy AAA and naval heavy AAA/DP guns. Without hindsight, I'd likely have preferred 20 mm, 40 mm and 75 mm plus cruisers using their main batteries to shoot shrapnel at skip bombers and torpedo bombers at pre-set distances.

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Fast forward to today: 

Shahed 136-class cruise missiles can fly at 15,000 ft, above effective 40 mm gun ceiling. They are barely in reach of 57 mm guns. A modern 76.2 anti-aircraft gun based on the widely-employed naval gun and its munitions can easily reach Shahed 136 at 15,000 ft, but would struggle to reach and hit Shaheed 238 (more expensive, faster, higher, shorter-ranged) at their 30,000 ft service ceiling. Warships can self-defend against such cheap missiles even with small calibres (20...57 mm), but bigger calibres (76.2 up to 130 mm) are much more useful for protecting  escorted ships due to their greater effective range.

We need defences against flying munitions after land-based air defences obsessed about shooting at platforms (except in training) for generations. Something small calibre (up to 2 cm) makes sense for very short lines of sight (around treetop altitude), fairly compact autocannons can wipe clean the sky up to about 10000 ft. We need cheap guided missiles or the (unmanned) fighter approach to deal with higher-than-15,000 ft munitions without breaking the bank (which is what Germany did trying to defend against rugged bombers at 27,000 ft with 8.8, 10.5 and 12.8 cm guns).

A use of 155 mm (gun-)howitzers (which are equivalent to WW2 15 cm heavy anti-air artillery muzzle energy) for shooting down some munitions with special proximity-fused HE shells (normal PROX fuses won't work) should be possible, but this should be a mere secondary task for 155 mm guns.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*:  No better gun in the 37...40 mm calibre range was deployed after the Bofors other than its own evolution, the somewhat longer-barrelled 40 mm Bofors of the Cold War. 35 mm guns appeared around 1970 and excelled with much better rates of fire, but 40 mm remained the smallest calibre for proximity fusing until at least the 1970's. I don't know when 35 mm became viable for proximity fusing.

**: In the end, the Soviets brought a successful 57 mm gun into service soon after WW2. This gun has a much higher muzzle velocity than the German 55 mm prototypes. The Soviets quickly gave it radar and computer fire control and it's now again in wartime use in the Russo-Ukrainian War, presumably without the radar and computer fire control.  It's mostly used as artillery, but would no doubt prove highly effective against cruise missiles if equipped with functioning automatic fire control and proximity-fused munitions. The West uses a Swedish 57 mm gun in naval context.  

***:  Germany understood this very, very late in the war. All that fuse-setting equipment was wasted because 88 mm AAA was about triple as deadly against 4-engine bombers with impact fusing, 105 mm about double as deadly and the 128 mm calibre gained very little from it.

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Mobilisation Part I: The need to counter arms buildups

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The French were keen to reconquer Alsace-Lothringia after 1871. They conscripted to the maximum (about 75% of young men were deemed fit and pressed into service), trained many officers, introduced the revolutionary Soixante-Quinze field gun and produced it in the thousands before WWI. Germany enjoyed a larger population base and kept the peace with a less extreme conscription (a bit over 50%). The defensive outlook of Germany in 1871-1913 was based on the consensus that German borders were satisfactory with no need for expansion. The alliance situation did put the gargantuan Russian army on the side of Germany's opposition, though. The German armies repeatedly called for additional funding for additional army corps, but the parliament (of the then supposedly oh-so militaristic German nation) refused such expansions for many years about two years before WW1. Eventually, Germany was short of a couple army corps in 1914 to win in France and the First World War became not only unnecessarily bloody, but also a disaster that cracked (amongst others) the German society. The ability to expand the armed forces more rapidly before WWI would have helped much; it would have kept costs (and loss of productivity) low during the many peaceful decades that preceded the First World War in Central Europe and it would have delivered that critical extra punch when the war happened.

The run-up to the Second World War was longer. Italy's Fascist government was considered a prime threat to peace in Europe around 1930, but the Soviet Union was at that time already much-increasing its arms production output based on new factories, some of which were built with American help. Germany turned Fascist in early 1933 and began a rearmament program based on a 100,000 troops army of men who were almost all qualified for immediate promotion (plus a small navy) and reintroduced conscription in 1935. Hostilities began around 1936-1938 with the Italian aggressions against Albania, Abbessinia (Ethiopia), the Japanese attack on China and German occupation of today's Czech Republic. The Second World War officially broke out in late 1939 and by end of 1941 the world was on fire for real. Again, several countries would have fared better if they had better prepared for a rapid expansion of their armed forces, especially their army. They had about two to twelve years time for this expansion, depending on country and political situation.

These are two examples of very high stakes conflicts with a prior period of a few years in which countries needed to prepare for (defensive) war in face of preparations for war by aggressive powers. Maybe such an ability would even have deterred the historical aggressor?

This series of blog posts will cover the scenario of a peaceful country (or alliance) reacting to aggressive intent and the potential aggressors' military build-up.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Response to Houthi piracy

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I wrote during the times of Somali-origin piracy that the patrolling mission was stupid. It was known by collected intelligence that almost all piracy could be traced back to three coastal villages (at some point in time - this may have changed later).

The hugely successful (and rapid!) anti-piracy campaign of Pompey the Great cleared the Mediterranean off the pirates plague for centuries to come. It involved a fleet, but the fleet actions were rather supportive of using infantry to clear out the piracy bases. Eventually, some cornered pirate ships stood up for battle and were destroyed.

Historically, piracy wasn't defeated by patrolling. Close blockades of piracy/raider ports was somewhat effective, attacks on raider ports were somewhat effective, but only ending war or at least temporary taking the piracy bases promise a lasting solution to a piracy or raider problem.

So I denounced the Atalanta mission and argued that piracy should be attacked at its bases.

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15 years forward, the Houthis commit piracy a little farther north (and there's STILL ships patrolling off Somalia!). It is piracy because the Houthi forces are not recognised as state actors (state forces cannot commit piracy by definition).

The USN had destroyer(s) in the area and shot down some anti-ship missiles of multiple types (drones mostly with 127 mm guns). Still, the Houthis captured a car transport as an early success (by helicopter, which is impractical now with destroyers securing the route). Western Yemen enjoys a couple thousand new cars.

Is this the time to go for the piracy bases?

A land war or even only major raids seem out of question; the relevant hardware of the pirates would not be eliminated without extreme effort. The U.S. and UK opted for air attack(s).

First off regarding the legality; I'm confident the internationally recognised government of Yemen was fine with the strikes. Even if it wasn't, the piracy may have provided a legal basis for the strikes (though I have no reliable info that either the U.S. or UK or their ships were attacked).

The practical considerations are more interesting.

What's the point of bombing other than to vent frustration or do business as usual?

The justifiable purpose of bombing (and the associated risk to protected persons a.k.a. civilians on the ground) would be to reduce or end the threat to ships at sea, the piracy threat.

1. Does the piracy threat get reduced?
2. Was or will it be ended by air strikes?
3. Could it have been neutralised by defensive action (escorting convoys as most navies think or area defence as the USN appears to prefer)? Keep in mind defensive action does not endanger civilians on land.
4. Could/should the piracy be ended by accepting the political demands (~ending Israel's Gaza war)?
   

1) Maybe, but it depends on how much the agitated Houthis will react with increases of capability. Their  reaction to air strikes might overcompensate for the loss of hardware.

2) This is almost impossible hardware-wise, and most unlikely as a political reaction.

3) So far the defences were very effective (and some of the attacking missiles very inaccurate). The biggest problems were the costs of the missiles used and the risk the seamen (especially of the cargo ships) were exposed to.

4) IMO not a promising approach. The issue would likely flare up again even if the demands were met by now - regardless of whether as a deal or just by coincidence.

I was and am not in favour of the air strikes. They're a primitive out of the box action by utterly unimaginative and strategy-free establishments. Reasons:

a) The Houthis have been bombed for years by the Saudis with American tech and they adapted already. The hardware that threatens the ships can very largely be hidden almost anywhere in Houthi territory. I have very little confidence in the ability to reliably find and positively identify the proper targets. The risk of civilian casualties is very high. Keep in mind the Americans once mistook a fertilizer factory for a poison gas factory and had a long, long string of poor targeting choices ever since. I don't expect these attacks to get rid of much of the relevant Houthi arsenal. I've seen claims that 25% of the hardware for piracy was eliminated, and I'd rather consider "the 5% most easily found piracy-related targets were hit" as plausible.

b) Where's the smartness in just blowing stuff up? Let's have a look at the Houthis' interests. They want to rule over all of Yemen. How about reversing the unification of Yemen and the Northern Yemenis (~Houthi movement area) simply govern themselves again as a non-secular people many of whom belong to a different Muslim sect than their neighbours? A de-unification seems to be the only way to calm the conflict in the region (of which piracy is but a small episode) anyway.

So let's give incentives towards an internationally recognised, not sanctioned, sovereign North Yemen where the Houthis rule over themselves and their kin. They might also be given some other (free) bargaining chips, such as a coincidental end of the bombing of Gaza (which is to be expected as soon as Israel has swept the remaining smaller part of the Gaza Strip anyway).

Add disincentives towards continuing other (unacceptable) paths. The Houthis sure don't want weapons and munitions given to their enemies. They don't want a naval blockade against themselves. They don't want the Saudis or anyone else to fight them.

And most of all: Make that piracy the problem of Egypt. Shame Egypt's junta publicly into action and withhold military aid from them for good (same with Israel, obviously).

Sometimes we get told that smart security policy experts, foreign policy experts, experienced career people, smart admirals, smart generals and smart think tankers are behind what Western security policy does. I do very much doubt that, because primitive stuff like this bombing campaign could be made-up by some drunk low-IQ people just as much.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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A simplified view on WW2 Eastern Front

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There are occasionally distorting publications that overemphasize certain things or pieces of equipment in conventional warfare, and WW2 in particular. I will try to guide the reader's thoughts about such subjects to certain essentials.

From the German perspective, this is what was a must-have (beyond mere sustainment and trivial things) to defeat the Soviet forces in WW2:

#1: Capture many POWs

The primary tool for this were highly mobile (enough suitable vehicles and fuel) "fast divisions" (not just tank divisions) that enabled encirclements with not too porous pocket walls.

#2: Kill or maim many Red Army soldiers

The tool for this was ~80% indirect fires; howitzers and mortars. The quantity of available HE munitions was more important than qty of guns. The conflict saw much more KIA than POW in 1942-1945, as the Germans had lost the combination of factors that enabled grand encirclements.

#3: Reduce Red Army operational mobility and reduce its supply throughput

The tool for this was (night) bombing or railway infrastructures and especially "railheads" (where supplies were unloaded). The venerable He 111H of 1940 was fine for this even as late as 1945 on the Eastern Front.

#4: Stall Red Army attacks

Post-WW2 literature recounted that more losses were inflicted on Red Army assault troops by shelling marshalling locations prior to the assault than during the assault. About half of the defeated Red Army attacks were stalled before the small arms fields of fire of the German infantry. So this is in part about #2, but also very much about military intelligence.

#5: Break tank attacks

The most important tools for this were by far two basic types of long 7.5 cm cannons; one anti-tank gun (L/46 barrel) and one for AFVs (L/48), which foolishly used different cartridge formats. They proved to be effective enough even in 1945.

Such armaments could have been available in the mid 30's (two such guns existed then) already.

#6: Keep friendly losses bearable

A steel flak vest would have helped greatly, as would have a widespread availability of APCs for infantry assaults and general transportation on the last mile. Most important was proper infantry training, though. 6 month training binds many NCOs, but it leads to much lower casualty rates than 6 weeks training.

 #7: Good quality leadership that doesn't waste personnel and material with gross violations of operating principles (Einsatzgrundsätze).

This included to some degree good communications including radio tech.

 

This may all seem terribly obvious, but it wasn't obvious enough. Different compromises were made, and that led to military disaster.

You can deduct the importance of things during that campaign from these 7 (8 with sustainment) pillars. I suppose that they are still relevant.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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Littoral modesty

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This is a 2020 paper draft that was IIRC submitted to and rejected by CIMSEC (they published other drafts of mine). I just rediscovered it and don't remember having it published on D&F (and a quick search didn't find it, either). In worst case it's a cosmetically changed repost.

Small and regional powers with coastlines have legitimate maritime law enforcement and defence interests. Their governments should pursue the public interest, and it’s a seemingly trivial decision to seek maritime power for this.  

The history of small and regional maritime powers does not easily or clearly support the notion that allocating great resources to the maritime domain is wise, though. Such an expenditure should yield greater benefits than the costs incurred, for else it causes net harm to the own country. 

 

There are many examples of inefficient small and regional power navies:

Iran’s navy failed to enforce a naval blockade on the aggressor Iraq during the Gulf War in the 1980’s. Such a blockade was potentially decisive and the geography as well as Iranian pre-war investments in naval and air power made it look very easy, but third party intervention ruined the strategy for Iran.

The Argentinian navy proved to be irrelevant in the Falklands War save for one coastal-launched anti-ship missile and naval light strike aircraft operating from a continental airbase.

The navies of Italy and Hungary-Austria had their glorious battle at Lissa in 1866, but the naval battle winning-Austria-Hungary still lost the war.

The navies of Siam, China, Chile, Poland, Russia, Pakistan and even Germany were more a drain of resources than war winners throughout their histories. Even the navy of France has little to show in terms of useful performance relative to its budgeting since the mid-18th century.

There are precious few examples of successful and relevant small wartime navies, such as Greece in the First Balkan War (naval blockade of Ottoman ports) and Sri Lanka in the late stage of the Sri Lankan Civil War (naval blockade against arms-running boats). Auxiliary cruisers refitted during wartime were important to exploit successes of a few modern regular warships in the former case and small speedy gunboats built during wartime were decisive in the latter case.

 

Learning about naval history should rather discourage small and regional powers from affording much of a seagoing navy. This can be explained with a naval “The winner takes it all” pattern. 

 

There’s rarely a naval conflict in which the inferior navy is of much utility. The superior navy can enforce or break blockades, can conduct land attacks and even invasions. The inferior navy suffers and may inflict suffering, but doesn’t prove to be decisive in favour of its country. Land-based assets, submarines and at least up to WW2 also small motor torpedo boats and auxiliary cruisers (merchant raiders) were the only tactically usually successful assets for underdog naval powers. They can still operate when and where surface warship fleets would get wiped out. Surface warship fleets are useful for dominant navies only. Yet even superior navies need to employ their surface fleets with caution and avoid many too dangerous areas.

 

Small and regional maritime powers should thus be aware that spending great resources on a seagoing miniature navy is most unlikely to be cost-efficient. Even a (usually expensive) submarine force is of very questionable value. The largest submarine force of history lost its war and the modern Argentinians submarine fleet achieved nothing relevant at the Falklands.

 

Land-based assets on the other hand may be survivable and effective enough to justify themselves with their deterrence value.  Modern minehunting and minebreaking is largely done by drones, and there’s little reason why these could not be operated from land rather than from some minehunter.

Anti-ship missiles can be launched from land, and receive their targeting information from air power. This was tactically successful for Argentina and Ukraine and is an important capability to Sweden and Taiwan. They can also be launched by land-based aircraft, and be synchronised with anti-radar missiles.

Sea lanes close to the coast could be secured against submarines by multistatic low frequency active sonar (LFAS) networks that make use of semi-mobile receivers with cable connection to land and a few tug-pulled emitters, or even buoy LFAS emitters with cable connection to land. Contact verification could be done with minehunting sensor drones (that usually identify naval mines, could be delivered by rotary wing drone) or (as a most expensive and fragile solution) by ASW helicopters. Submarines could be engaged by self-deploying self-recovering naval mines (essentially electric heavyweight torpedoes), quickly rocket-delivered lightweight torpedoes (similar to the RUM-125B Sea Lance project) or rotary wing drone-deployed lightweight torpedoes.

 

An ordinary ASW frigate with one ASW helicopter can cost nearly a billion dollars till operational and is a juicy “all eggs in one basket” high value target by comparison to such a resilient coastal ASW network. The frigate would no doubt be preferred by admirals on an emotional level, though.

 

Small and regional maritime powers need more than wartime capability, of course.

Iceland’s coastal guard has shown during the “Cod Wars” that a coast guard can achieve much with great determination and audacity in spite of little resources and without firing a shot. Policing and sea rescue boats as well as maritime surveillance equipment (over the horizon radars, light twin engine planes with FLIR, radar, E/O zoom camera and possibly additional sensors to detect illegal environmental pollution by ships) do make sense. Maritime SAR helicopters with a secondary policing (boarding) missions are another fairly easily justified coast guard asset for many of the wealthier countries.

 

Smalls and regional powers do also require a suitable national maritime policy to ward off territorial or other challenges, not just tools.

Such a policy should be multinational. A great power may choose to pick on a small power, but great powers are not known for overt aggressions towards a group of small powers that opposes transgressions unitedly. A challenge to a maritime exclusive economic zone claim by a warship-escorted fishing fleet should be answered by a multinational coast guard boat task force, for example. Even a modern destroyer is at great risk when surrounded by three gun-armed coast guard boats at short distance. A suitable design of the coast guard boats could make the risk in ramming incidents unbearable for every destroyer captain.

 

There are alternative ways to pursue a small or regional power’s goals in the littorals than a conventional miniature navy. These alternatives may be a lot more robust and useful in wartime and fully satisfactory in SAR and policing during peacetime.

 

Navies do define themselves as organisations with a warship fleet, and the interest in having such platforms creates a bias against non-warship answers to the challenges.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Wagner and SS

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Hitler's NSDAP party had a paramilitary organisation for bullying, intimidating, 'security' at events and plain brawling against communists and social-democrats; it was called the SA.

This SA quickly became very important and very powerful in 1933, as among other things it gained power by providing personnel for the government's new auxiliary police force that did the dirt political stuff that the regular police wasn't reliable enough for.

Its leader became too ambitious* for Hitler and was eliminated in 1934, the SA was dissolved.

A much smaller violent party organisation rose to prominence instead. This SS had been a kind of bodyguards organisation at first. It took over much SA personnel and among other things the running of the KZs, which were at that time mostly holding political prisoners.

You didn't need to be well-versed in military matters to rise up the ranks in these organisations, most important for a career were

• being loyal to superiors
• being able to shout commands well
• being ambitious
• participating in social events with other 'leaders'
• talking shit
  

Some men rose through the ranks because of personal connections to top leaders, in the SA this included wartime friends of the SA leader.

The military arm of the SS was founded soon after war broke out, in late 1939. It became a parallel organisation to the army.

There was another parallel German ground force in WW2; the air force (Luftwaffe) had initially a ground combat element in shape of paratroopers, which gained much attention and prestige in 1940 and 1941. It wasn't difficult to raise them as a good infantry force because the air force itself was created in 1933 with army officers.

The army bled white in the Russia campaign 1941...1943 while the air force wasted hundreds of thousands of infantry-suitable young conscripts in utterly inflated organisations such as pickets all over occupied France to observe the sky with eyes and microphones. Thus the Luftwaffe came under pressure to provide men for ground warfare. Its ambitious and blusterous boss Göring didn't intend to have hundreds of thousands of young men transferred from HIS air force to army. So he formed air force divisions for ground combat, with more or less ridiculous names (including a 'paratrooper tank division'). These divisions appeared a decade after the inheritance of skilled army personnel by the air force and they generally weren't average or better fighting forces. Their equipment was mostly 3rd rate (including many captured weapons with insecure munitions supply) anyway. Their leaders would have been fit for occupation security regiments, while their young conscripts should have been channelled through several months of retraining in and by the army before being sent to the front.

 

Back to the Waffen-SS; it was founded in late 1939, enjoyed no inheritance of thousands of highly skilled army officers and once in action on the Eastern Front in 1941/1942 it quickly gained a reputation for reckless and unnecessarily casualties-rich tactics. In short; it was led poorly.

This did improve eventually, but the continued quick expansion of the Waffen-SS to rival the army ever more and the concentration of talent in one 'elite' flagship division meant that the waning army critique of Waffen-SS casualty rates was probably more about the deteriorating army experiencing rising casualty rates itself in 1943...1945 than about the Waffen-SS becoming very good at tactics.

Brutality towards not only the enemy but also towards the own men was employed by the Waffen-SS (and the army itself was already brutal by today's standards including an outrageous casualty rate during training).

Neither the air force's dabbling in ground war nor the Waffen-SS' were rooted in rational optimisation of national warfare potential. These were political efforts, meant to elevate their leader, some inner circle crony. Neither army competitor was particularly skilled and both suffered excessive casualty rates (including the original paratroopers, who were ruined in the Crete invasion).

Fast forward to 2022, we see the Wagner PMC employing inept tactics and brutality in a ground war in order to elevate the political weight of their crony-in-command, Prigozhin. The organisation has a few former military officers, but isn't built on such 'competence'. Wagner PMC's behaviour  fits to the fact that the Russian Federation checked all the Fascism test checkboxes in the past years.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: It didn't help him that he was a fat by the standards of the day, gay and in the focus of public disaffection with the new regime and its corruptness.

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Prussian infantry singlemindedness

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The Prussian army of 1741 won Frederick the Great's first battle because it was better drilled. It was capable of shooting about three shots per minute, while the opposing Austrian-Hungarian troops shot about two times per minute. The psychological pressure of getting shot at so much more often while the Prussian lines were advancing was too much for the Austrian-Hungarian infantry and it broke and ran.

Prussia had to become good at much else (cavalry charges, use of artillery, first all-mounted "horse" artillery brigades, improvements of skirmishing, battle manoeuvres) to prevail in that was and the next, but the infantry remained obsessed with shooting faster than the enemy.

 

 

1773 Prussia introduced a new ramrod for loading infantry muskets that had identical ends and thus the drill was shortened by eliminating the movement of turning the ramrod around.

1781 Prussia introduced a conical hole between the barrel and the pan where the flintlock's sparks ignite the blackpowder. This shortened the loading drill further, as the movement for adding blackpowder to that pan was eliminated and the movement to close the pan was eliminated. The blackpowder from the barrel now fell by itself into the pan through the conical hole.

The rate of fire was improved to about six rounds per minute. The infantryman carried 60 cartridges at that time, but the shooting order inevitably broke down in battle and even the best flint of the flintlock had to be replaced after about 50 shots, so there was enough munition for much more than 10 minutes of shooting.

 

That's how the Prussian army went to war with Revolutionary France and later Napoleonic France, but the infantry failed to impress in those battles. This was certainly in significant part to the increased numbers of artillery pieces in battles, but those had already risen before 1763. Inferior morale of the infantry was another issue. But maybe something else was wrong, too?

Let's look at the conical hole, which as far as I can tell is universally lauded as an improvement in literature.

This hole allowed blackpowder to fall into the pan from the barrel. The infantryman only needed to open the paper cartridge, pour teh blckpower into the musket muzzle and then ram the ball bullet down the barrel. So the blackpowder that was ignited by sparks was identical to the blackpowder that drove the lead ball forward in the barrel.

 

I see a problem here, and it is about the nature of blackpowder: Blackpowder is made of a carbon source (charcoal), an oxygen source (saltpetre) and sulfur. What's the purpose of sulfur? It's much more flammable than the others, so it can be ignited with adequate reliability by sparks (if dry). Adding more sulfur does actually not make the blackpowder more powerful. 

So you want a high sulfur content in the pan (to be ignited by the sparks) and low sulfur content blackpowder in the barrel. You can have that if you store and load a more sulfur-rich blackpowder for the ignition pan.

To have more sulfur in the barrel than necessary is wasteful and provokes supply issues in wartime. Flint was imported from France, England and Spain (Spain was usually at war with either Spain or France and allied with the other in 1740....1815), charcoal (preferably by hemp stem cores) could be produced anywhere, saltpetre could be won from any pigsty. Meanwhile, sulfur was imported from Italy.

So the Prussian method was economically wasteful, but that's not the whole issue: Sulfur is the part of blackpowder that makes blackpowder famous for producing much smoke.The smoke became an issue, as troops and leaders could not see their enemies well any more, as the smoke of muskets and cannons accumulated on the battlefield.

 

 

The Prussian infantry of the 1780's did not only shoot three times faster than the Austro-Hungarian infantry of 1740, it did also produce more smoke with every shot. This was done by an army that kept the three-rank line (as opposed to the British who used a two-rank line), another +50% smoke.

The Prussians had muskets that looked neat, but their buttstock was not angled well and made the use of sights very awkward. That didn't matter much, as the muskets didn't really have sights. Well, adding sights would not have helped past the first salvo anyway.

I suspect that the Prussian focus on infantry rate of fire was too singleminded and suboptimal. Skirmishing, morale (motivation) and coping with logistics austerity was much more important than nominal rate of fire in 1792...1815. Later, the ingeniously simple invention of the Minié ball allowed quick muzzle loading of rifles and for the first time the accuracy of fire of general infantry became most important.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

P.S.: There are debates about what rates of fire were really achieved. There's no debate regarding Prussians loading and shooting more rapidly, that's consensus.

I used the book ISBN 3-8289-0521-8 to write this blog post, for I didn't want to fully rely on memory of what I read years ago.

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Battalion battlegroups and front-lines

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Tanks had mixed success in the First World War, but they showed much promise and European armies and military theoreticians pondered during the 1920's how best to organise and employ tank forces. The epitome of this process was the Panzerdivision / armour division with hundreds of tanks and between 10,000 and 20,000 personnel. These divisions were successful when employed as a whole, but operational success required more than just one division; a whole corps of at least two fully motorised divisions.

Operations in WW2 also showed that these divisions were behemoths that were difficult to lead. German Panzerdivision commanders often reduced themselves to a leader of a much smaller vanguard, while their chief of staff somehow organised that the bulk of the division follows the vanguard.

The later much-reduced (nominally and by lack of replacements) Panzerdivisionen were much easier to use and the well-replenished American divisions employed regimental combat teams similar to modern-time brigades to overcome the excessive size of the division during operations.

Brigades became a NATO standard during the Cold War, in part based on German experiments in the late 50's. We still have many divisions, but it's widely understood that divisions are too clumsy for operational manoeuvre. In fact, sometime in the late Cold War or 90's even the brigade became regarded as too clumsy and the (mixed) battalion battlegroup became the key manoeuvre element, comprising usually only one tank company. Organisation for training was usually kept pure (whole battalion being tanks OR infantry OR artillery), and expected wartime structure  in non-desert terrain would be a mixed ad hoc battlegroup with one or two tank companies, one or two infantry companies, maybe an artillery battery or two and some more support (a total of about 1,000 men and about 100 vehicles). Some peacetime exercises and experiments even went farther and worked with mixed company-sized battlegroups.

There's just one problem with this trend towards smaller manoeuvre elements; It's well-understood from military history that you sometimes need about 50 tanks for a successful true tank-like offensive action. To disperse tanks in smaller packages largely reduces their repertoire against 1st or 2nd rate opposition to fire support guns for infantry; assault guns.

It is thus absolutely necessary for operational success to temporarily mass multiple battlegroups for a combined attack on one opposing forces element (such as a battalion or brigade) or simply for breakthrough against a defensive line.

The Russians appear to not try this any more. A possible explanation is that their (and our!) force structure is the problem: They cover a long front-line, and have mostly mechanised forces to do so. Operational art is in large part about forming and using reserves, but the Russians are stretched so thin that their forces for operational manoeuvre are actually pinned down as line troops along a long front-line: A task for infantry with artillery support, instead done by heavily mechanised forces that need to have their BMP IFVs and other armoured vehicles far forward with their few infantrymen. The AFV fleet suffers a slow yet steady attrition while being exposed like this, without achieving any operational breakthroughs or even exploitations.

It appears that this force structure is fundamentally flawed. The Russo-Ukrainian War shows that front-lines are in fact possible against Russian armed forces that perform at the lower boundary of what was previously thought possible. I myself did not expect this and wrote for years about how front-lines could not happen for lack of troops. Well, the Ukrainians simply mobilised enough troops, dug in and somehow this suffices against the thinly-spread Russian forces.

So let's summarise:

The operational impotence of the Russian land forces may be temporary and end when they free mechanised forces for operational reserves by either shortening the front-line or by introducing large quantities of artillery-backed infantry.

The land forces structures in NATO are unsuitable for the kind of stationary conflict we see in Ukraine, and their only hope of doing much better art of war-wise is to succeed in mobile warfare without front-lines.

Operational manoeuvre against combat-ready opposition is still only possible with local superiority, the historical rule of thumb regarding massing of tanks seems to still apply.

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Rest times for armour

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One expectation / opinion of mine that was kind of confirmed by the Russo-Ukrainian War is that mechanised forces need secure resting (hiding) bivouacs.

They have extraordinary supply demands to catch up with (supply is unlikely to work all the time), extraordinary maintenance and also repair needs and extraordinary human rest needs (tracked vehicles are noisy, vibrate much and most have no air conditioning, furthermore armoured action can be very intense). The combat power of armoured troops would be spent quickly and likely to little use if they were used with high intensity for more than four days in a row.

My reasoning was basically that the German army of WW2 was about 85...90% infantry/artillery formations and only about 10% formations with many armoured vehicles, and the latter were able to rest, recuperate, repair behind a front-line formed by infantry and artillery.

Concealment (usually by woodland) and some battlefield air defences (mostly 20 and 37 mm guns) were enough to make these resting bivouacs very safe places for them.

An alternative approach was used by the resources-rich Americans; they gave more tanks to an infantry division than a German tank division had and had thousands of friendly tactical aircraft in support, and in consequence those armour units were also quite safe.

So my concern for the past ~12 years was that there would not be safe-enough bivouacs for armoured units due to the marginal quantities of infantry available. This is not just about combat power of infantry; the lack of delaying forces would mean that an armoured raid could advance 20+ km in an hour, so a bivouac could even be overrun, or come into even mortar range unexpectedly. A French armoured division was indeed overrun in its nighttime bivouac in 1940.

I looked at some things, and settled on a combination of militia infantry battalions (kind of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence forces, but better trained before the war) and small mechanised battlegroups as skirmishers well in front of most (then resting) armoured forces as the way to go.

So what is being done in Ukraine: The Russians saw their infantry shortage and did not keep armoured formations in good hiding positions in the relatively safe rear areas. They kept them rather close forward to reinforce the front. The BMP IFVs were not separated from their dismounts (infantry), so they must have been particularly exposed. Their main battle tanks were apparently operating in platoon strength much of the time, so they were dispersed very much as well.

We also saw MBTs used (and destroyed by ATGMs) in overwatch positions in Yemen and Syria, with Arab kleptocrat state armies and Turkish army making use of their good sensors instead of properly equipping the much easier-hidden infantry for observation.

Western land forces would probably have acted the same way as the Russians due to their weak infantry component.

The result of such behaviour is that armoured vehicles are much-exposed, easily found, identified and targeted with artillery. This is particularly troublesome against an opposing force with bird's view. This behaviour also leads to a dispersal of armoured vehicles, which makes it harder to mass forces for aggressive localised actions. This in turn leads to an inability to advance much, even though the infantry weakness should 'only' make it hard to hold ground.

It is a bit weird to see so little infantry in Western armies, as infantry is not really more expensive than many other branches. Many young men want to be infantrymen, especially some kind of special infantryman ("ranger", "commando", "marine", "para" are 'sexy'), due to male hardcoding and cultural reasons. 

So given the apparent difficulty to recruit (and re-enlist) enough full-time infantry, the way to might indeed be to set up militias (basically independent infantry battalions) that do give a decent training (six months basic, more for NCOs) and possess decent equipment. The frontier countries would naturally be expected to have impressive militias, while the more rearward countries of NATO and EU would not need to have full recruiting for the militias; their surplus of militia equipment could be valuable aid to countries under threat or attack.

And then - only then - after solving the infantry shortage we might be able to make armour work anything like it's supposed to work in our doctrines.

By the way; the issues I've mentioned here do of course not show up in a few days of exercise in mere battalion strength on an unrealistic "open fields + woodland" exercise area. They were easily anticipated and easily deduced from military history, though.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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A messed-up international disorder

 

So, looking at the mess in Ukraine, what's my take?

The upside: Putin is apparently not the type for strategic surprise attacks. This calms my fears for NATO, as Russia could only hope to succeed with an aggression in the Baltic if it attacks by surprise. I am very pleasantly surprised about this.

Why did Western policy fail in Ukraine? In short; it was half-assed. No great power signed and ratified a bilateral alliance treaty with Ukraine to cover it until a much longer (and more overt from the beginning) NATO accession process could be concluded. Either draw Ukraine into the West or don't, half-assed measures are prone to disappoint.

So what did Russia do? The Russian Federation with Putin as de facto dictator (voting him out of office is not really an option for Russians) violated international law (Charter of the United Nations and more) by becoming aggressive against Ukraine in 2014 and occupying parts of its territory. It's thus an aggressor and occupier comparable to Iraq 90/91, Israel since 1967, Turkey since 1974 (a NATO member and I don't see any sanctions), Morocco since 1975, the U.S., UK and Poland in 2003 for a difficult to determine duration.

As you might have spotted, only one country on that list was beaten up (repeatedly) for the offence. All others officially got away, typically due to protection courtesy by the UNSC veto feature.

This is the problem: The West routinely expects non-Western countries (especially governments it doesn't like) to adhere to international law and paints them as evil when they don't (and often does so even only because there are expectations such as Iran never having violated the NPT, but still being assailed constantly). Yet International Law doesn't seem to feel all that binding and imperative to Western great power policy, or even only to its proxies.

Do as I say, not as I do.

A great attempt was made to build a world based on international law and order in 1944 with the founding of the United Nations. The 1991 war to hand back Kuwait to its kleptocrat-tyrant was widely perceived as a most promising effort to enforce such a rule of international law in the post-Cold War era. 

Yet the Americans did not scale back their (since the trigger-happiness of Reagan in the 1980's) habitual aggressions; they bombed Afghanistan, Bosnian Serbs (with Brits and Frenchmen), Sudan and Iraq (repeatedly, but with little munitions) in the short 1992-1998 time frame. None of this was legal under international law, and there wasn't even the slightest hint of fig leaf legality in the bombing of the Bosnian Serbs around Sarajevo.

Meanwhile, the NATO bureaucrats and allied politicians worked hard to keep NATO "relevant" after its original purpose became obsolete; a defensive alliance was re-worked into an intervention/war adventure club.

Then came the 1999 Kosovo Air War, preceded by a multinational campaign of lies. There was no genocide, period. The Kosovars' intent to become independent was legitimate, but the Serbs-run governments' police, paramilitary and military actions against the violent independence movement were legal under international law and an ordinary response. The conflict happened in the context of the earlier genocidal massacre committed by Serbs at Srebrenica in Bosnia and thus the Western public was fairly easily convinced and swayed by the lie of an alleged ethnic cleansing/genocide in Kosovo (I was fooled back then as well, and never again since).

Almost all Western powers of note participated in this aggression against Yugoslavia, which was blatantly against international law. The recognition of Kosovo's independence years later and ongoing Western troops presence to keep it that way provided blueprints that were later used by Russia.

West Germany/Reunited Germany had its original sin with this Kosovo affair and our federal constitutional court threw officers under the bus who had correctly and valiantly refused orders to participate in this aggression.

Afghanistan was invaded in 2001. It was no a clean self-defence by a long shot, as the Taleban were never killing anyone outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but most if not all countries kinda understood and tolerated the American rage.

Once more, NATO was brought into the conflict for absolutely no need, and very contrary to the North Atlantic Treaty, but by this point nobody seemed to care about the treaty any more. The idea of what NATO is or should be had been warped beyond recognition. The craze about the Taleban who had merely granted hospitality to UBL who helped them in their civil war lasted for two decades and very recently the U.S. government stole billions of dollars owned by the Afghan government. It appears as if they are bound to multi-generational anger about Afghanistan comparable to how they still hate Iran's government for the 1979 embassy crisis.

The Kosovo Air War blueprint of massive campaign of lies, deception and vilification was replayed by the Neocons to lie the U.S. (and the UK under the fool Blair, plus Poland) into a completely unjustified war of aggression against Iraq in 2003 (this time I didn't fall for it at all). Again, they got away with it in the UNSC, but this time the Iraqis made it very expensive for them. The American wars in the Mid East including Afghanistan total exceeds USD 6.5 trillion expenses including long-term costs.

The lying moron did "cruise missile diplomacy" (an aggression) against Syria, and most Americans seem to think he was a peacenik who abstained from aggressions. That's how badly their perception of what constitutes aggression was warped.

Now let's skip the South Ossetia War of 2008 (the Russian Federation was and is an aggressor in both South Ossetia and Abchasia, similar to what the West did in Kosovo), and look at the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

By international law, Ukraine is a sovereign country, including Donezk, Lugansk, Crimea. Its government is legal and legitimate, but that's not even of importance. Even dictatorships are sovereign countries and shall not be attacked under international law.

By international law, Russia is waging a (most of the time limited, as for example no air power was used until 2022) war of aggression against Ukraine.

The outrage is huge in the West.

How could Russia do this? Russia is evil! 

 

Sure, it's evil, but so are we Westerners.  

The problem is that the West did not only fail to bolster International law, it systematically disregarded it and preferred "might makes right" for itself.

The U.S. and UK are just as evil as Russia.*

Other European countries stood by, supported or tolerated or sometimes called for the aggressions of the U.S. and UK. Most of "the West" is guilty by association, as much as Germany was involved in starting the First World War by giving the aggressive Austria-Hungary a "blank cheque" that it'll support it in the summer 1914 crisis. Austria-Hungary's behaviour in summer of 1914 was accurately replayed by the Neocons in 2002/2003. All those politicians who like to give speeches about learning from history are cherry pickers.

Now we live in a world where Westerners understand that they aren't the only ones who can exploit such international lawlessness and play "might makes right".

This is a failure of Western foreign policy, and a well-deserved disgrace on the Western world. Putin would have had much more to fear if he ruled Russia in a world that had become accustomed to international law being followed by great powers for three decades. Now instead, he can rest assured that Western hypocrisy has dulled the blade of international law and his aggression will be tolerated by most of the world just as were Western aggressions.

Maybe we can push back the warmongers and launch another push for international law (for real), but it will be too late for Ukraine. Russia will at the very least (in my opinion) keep parts of Ukraine occupied and an open wound that very much prevents its accession into NATO, similar to what it does to Georgia.

It's much more likely that the warmongers who in large part got us into this messy, lawless world will feel an updraft and there will be more interventions and more military spending.

I hate warmongers and defense with an "s" hawks.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: France is a trickier case, and I dismiss Poland's participation in the war of aggression against Iraq as a one-off.