High and low end surface to surface missiles

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There are two land-to-land ballistic rocket design philosophies in the SRBM and MRBM brackets:

One is the kind we in the West have known well for decades. It's high-performing, compact, safe to store for many years, accurate, reliable, proprietary design and most importantly, it's built for manoeuvres and with countermeasures to make intercept super hard.

The other kind is by comparison crude, but can still be made to hit the factory you're aiming it at.

 

The high end rocket defeats defences by surviving them (only to crash into the target soon after). The low end rocket defeats defences by being still a difficult-enough and threatening-enough target to warrant the use of two interceptor missiles that each cost more. This way, defences can be overcome by attrition if you can afford volume production of the attack rocket. On top of this, the low end rocket does almost the same job against undefended or poorly defended targets. Its reliability and precision would be worse, but you'd get the job done at a smaller budget.

A case can be made that a hi-lo mix would make sense, but IMO the case of the high end rockets would be fairly niche. You don't need the ability to overcome defences without attrition or saturation if you have attrition and saturation potential in the arsenal anyway. The only need for the high end would be for naval use (most punch in small weight and volume budget) and for targets that require a very high precision.

Now look at this:

found here

 

Ballistic rockets are different. You do not get REALLY cheap with either them or defences against them. Furthermore, air defence that adapts and achieves a high kill rate would be expensive and thus self-defeating. It would also have a small footprint (small protected area) unless it's intercepting exoatmospheric, which makes the intercept missile really expensive. So it would need to be deployed in many places.

There's thus good reason to believe that an arsenal of low end (kinda affordable) MRBMs would not be defeated in a long time. On the other hand, using economics and thus taking into account interest effects, any big spending on military power long before a war or the need for powerful deterrence would have inflated cost due to accumulated interest. So there's no good reason for lots of countries to build up large low end MRBM arsenals for deterrence. 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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The real problem with defence against drones

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A blog post about the real drone problem is overdue because I do not see ANY indication that the real problem is part of the public discourse. As a consequence, there's severe misallocation of resources.

 

Imagine you're driving a vehicle through a typical European landscape. This is a VERY different landscape than military training grounds, by the way. There are trees, bushes, ditches close to roads, buildings, fields with tall (more than 30 cm high) crops, enough garages to hide a SUV-mobile company per village, there's scrap lying around.

You pass by one of the gazillion trees, it's still 50 m away. Your vehicle is equipped with all kinds of drone detection sensors imaginable such as visual spectrum optornics, NIR, MWIR, LWIR, mmW radar, acoustic, broadband frequency analysers. A quadcopter is accompanying your vehicle at 100 m altitude, it pattern recognises threats and a buddy of yours in the vehicle checks the reports. Suddenly, you're dead.

What happened? A drone that attached itself to the backside of a tree heard your vehicle approaching, swung its sensor and EFP around the tree stem and fired an EFP warhead at you. No hard kill APS stands a chance of stopping that. The overhead drone saw nothing. 

source https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382231382_Crash-perching_on_vertical_poles_with_a_hugging-wing_robot

What "C-UAS" defences could have protected you? Some 70 mm rocket with semi active laser seeker? Some 30 or 35 mm autocannon with radar and thermal imager fire control? Some laser? Some microwave beam weapon? No, not even the kind of defence that I argued for since 2017 -a CUAS RCWS with machinegun or at most a 20 mm autocannon- could have saved you.

A lot of passive and reactive protection would easily have stopped that EFP attack, of course.

EFP attack; a shaped charge with 110° or more opening angle

 

Now suppose it wasn't one tree, wasn't one drone and it wasn't using an EFP. It was a patch of woodland or some bushes or a plowed field with drones hiding under soil. There were 30 drones with Faraday cage protection against microwave attack. They rise suddenly, overwhelm the APS with a series of attacks and hit the top of your vehicle with 70+ mm (500+ mm RHAeq) tandem shaped charge warheads.

Again, you're dead. There were more than 20 penetrations because no vehicle can be protected against this with enough passive and reactive armour.

- - - - -

I believe I thought this through enough since 2017.

There's no line of sight defence against this.

We need to emphasise the thousands of years-old* concept of security effort

instead of staring at line of sight defences.

The traditional security effort would require to send men out, expose them to great risks to reduce the overall risk to the total force. That seems nonsensical now. We should send out drones as security effort, to search for, warn about and if possible neutralise hostile drones at a safe-enough distance.

Even a single car moving through hostile terrain would require a security ring around it, possibly at 200 to 2,000 m distance. Experiments will tell what the required radius is. Different terrain will require different security efforts and likely different sensors carried by the security force drones. So there would be a constant change of the security ring while that manned car is moving. The ring would become densified where needed, thinned out where that's acceptable, change of terrain from woodland to ploughed field would lead to a major change of what drones are scouting. The security force drones may even open and inspect buildings, weld shut manhole covers with thermite. The control software that controls the drones would report possible contacts, but it would also indicate the acceptable speed. It would need to be able to adapt to a change of route quickly. These security drones can look behind, under, into things. They can scan the ground - hostile drones may hide in loose soil such as mud and ploughed fields.

That's a LOT of effort for a single car. So mastering this AND having the ability to fend off a saturation attack of thousands of drones coming in one pulse (reminiscent of American carrier defence concepts of the late Cold War) is a huge effort. This leads to two conclusions:

1. A frontline with such a defence is much cheaper (and MUCH more reliably and more easily secured while static) than defending many individual areas all-round.
2. Any offensive movement in pincer-style or in form of a raid would have to be substantial. I estimate a brigade-sized effort may be debatable.

Conclusion #1 in particular would lead to a sizeable no man's land between human troops** and indeed between opposing high value hardware as well. The defender's advantage is slight when security drones fight security drones. Quality differences need to be substantial to matter much and even then they'd be unlikely to compensate for a factor three difference in production output. The party with the greater drone mass production capacity (and ability to supply the front with said drones) would win in a prolonged conflict. The peacetime inventories would matter for the first days, maybe weeks. The superior side could ruthlessly intensify the clash to quickly deplete the opposing drone forces. 

To be honest, I did not think all such consequences through yet. 

It's probably not necessary anyway, for it's rather unlikely that war happens when neither side has a qualitative edge or either side has a known qualitative or quantitative superiority that cannot be overcome. Defences could be shifted towards becoming impossible to occupy for long in such a case, preserving freedom only rather than freedom and civilian hardware.

Conclusion #2 is probably mostly relevant for the first days when a frontline is not fully established or if the inferior side wants to win by invading quickly. Another possible period of relevance is after the opposing party's drone forces were largely depleted, offering the opportunity to strike with a manoeuvre force without becoming overwhelmed.

 

The legacy arms industry wants to make the big buck with the kind fo hardware it understands: Big, expensive sensors and weapons; lasers, microwave weapons, autocannons, radars, big thermal imagers. This approach can sweep the sky between 100f t and 15,000 ft altitude just fine. It's not going to be enough. It's not even enough to protect against the fibreoptic FPV drones that laid in ambush next to roads in Ukraine months ago already. The focus on attention on above treetop line of sight C-UAS is badly misguided in regard to the battlefield. It's at most suitable to reduce the effect of strategic attacks.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: See Xenophon

**: Compare the movie "Screamers" https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2008/01/screamers.html  

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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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In-war deterrence by nukes

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It's about time to spell out something painfully obvious, because I don't see anyone else doing it:

Russia would have lost this war decisively long ago if it was no nuclear power.

The frontline combat is at a stalemate, the naval blockade crumbled long ago and Russia cannot win by strategic air war because Ukraine gets enough outside support to cope with the damage done to its infrastructure and economy.

Ukraine, on the other hand, could have won long ago by a strategic air war effort:

It could have destroyed the oil refineries, which a Russia under sanctions could not have coped with.

It could have destroyed enough transformer stations to collapse the Russian rail traffic in European Russia, which Russia could not have repaired due to sanctions alone (tiny chance that China could have helped out enough). 

Both would have collapsed the Russian economy as much as the railway grid bombing collapsed the German economy in I/1945. 

Why didn't Ukraine do it? My best guess is that its Western supporters gave support under the condition that no such extreme (=decisive) measures would be taken. Why would they have done that? Nukes.

So nuclear munitions are not just a deterrent in peacetime that so far helped to avoid direct war between nuclear powers. Nuclear power status has consequences during wartime that go beyond making force concentrations and single breakthrough points impractical. They also exert political influence. In the case of Russia, nukes protect Russia against strategic knockout blows.

 

Ukraine really has to work toward collapsing Russian ground forces' morale in order to reconquer the occupied areas. That is, unless a Western nuclear power grows some balls and knocks out Russian oil refineries by itself. The British could do that with cruise missiles.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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The "new" warfare in the Russo-Ukrainian War

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A string of twitter threads by different authors create an impression that this war is very different, kind of with different rules than previous wars, military doctrines from pre-2022 are obsolete now.

https://x.com/sambendett/status/1927076283000701067

https://x.com/GrandpaRoy2/status/1927714854351085928

https://x.com/Playfra0/status/1928183254089429005

https://x.com/GrandpaRoy2/status/1926930735266509094

I object.

 

Quite generally, when somebody claims that previous military theory is obsolete you should ask yourself what previous military theory this person knows about. You're nearly perfectly safe if you assume the answer is "very, very little" even if said person is a general.  Very few people dedicated much of thier lives tot he study of the art of war and people who learned some of it profesionally (such as generals) hardly ever learned much that goes beyond their own country's doctrine, and very little about how and why their county's doctrine came to be.

The drone war in Ukraine isn't terribly new. It's almost exactly a replay of the air war development 1911-1945, for example.

 

Yes, the kamikaze FPV threat is severe to up to 9 km depth, often extending to 20 km and rarely extending beyond that with almost none happening beyond 40 km depth against non-strategic targets.The long-established military term in English for this is "battlefield interdiction", and air forces aspire to do it not to 40 km depth, but to hundreds of kilometres depth.

To move yourself or goods to the front seems like running the gauntlet on the final 40 km and gets the worse the more close you are to the front? Does that sound all-new to you? Then you're not aware of the experience of the Japanese merchant marine trying to resupply distant island bases in the Pacific War or the experience of the German armed forces in France during June 1944, when the Northern French railway and airfield network was bombed to swiss cheese standards by the 9th Air Force. Do you think it's now that quadcopters are capable of cheap PGM-like precision attacks even on individuals? 8th Air Force fighters got bored in 1945 and began strafing individual bicyclists hundreds of kilometres away from frontlines in 1945.

What's "new" is that wer're in a brief "the bomber always gets through" pahaes during which there aren't enough counter-drone ("C-UAS") defences, so drones of BOTH SIDES are effective at battlefield interdiction instead of one side establishing low level air superiority/supremacy or both sides defending effectively to diminish the threat. That's about the situation we had in the very early 1930s when bombers were not slower than fighters.

All those improved fortifications, evolved through wartime experience? That's fortifications designed by amateurs who learned lessons by spending blood. There were VASTLY better field fortification schemes back in the 1950's already, but the overwehlming firepower of nukes didn't allow them to become very central to doctrines. Netting not just for concealment, but also for keeping drones out is new, but it's also pointless in face of the heaviest anti-trench munitions (bombs, TOS-1, napalm B).

Tanks get cages to keep FPV drones out? How is that conceptually different from cages to keep hand grenades out?

The frontline with up to 40 km battlefield interdiction poses a different challenge than pre-2022 warfare for breakthrough efforts? Sure, but is it really new, or worse? Breakthroughs against ready defenders were never easy, after all. I actually madke the case that the drone war situation is liberating in a way; suppose the FPV munitions are effective in a radius of 10 to 20 km. Traditional ATGMs were effective in a radius of 0.6 to 4 km mostly, with 2 km being a common practical limit in Ukrainian terrain. Now look at my (very) old text about repulsion and let it sink in. The increased radius of action actually liberates the attacker, he doesn't get channeled! Pre-2022 the same effort looked like this and it was the shorter rnage of the ATGMs that was slowing down the attacker. Now there's no such measures to limit losses to ATGMs. Attackers who would want to breakthrough could shout 'Damn the torpedoes, flank speed ahead!' and the breakthrough could be VERY quick if done well, which includes dealing with the WW2 revival band of mines, anti-tank ditches and gimped dragon's teeth as well as a fires plan that would make 1917's Bruchmüller proud.

I could go on, feel free to bring up true novelties in the comments. I have a hunch I'll reply with a military history analogy.

 

Patton was once asked about how he was such a good general and he replied (paraphrased) that nothing was really new to him during WW2. He knew everything from books already. Such students of military history and art people don't get fooled by fake novelty, but they are RARE.

Don't get fooled by people who claim novelty and impossibility because they don't know the past.

 

related:

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/fact-check-military-hardware-novelty.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/update-ugv-history.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2015/05/another-fact-check-military-hardware.html 

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2023/07/russian-fortifications-present-old.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2025/05/c-uas-on-battlefield-at-very-low.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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"Offensives" and Ukraine

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The Russo-Ukrainian War turned into a trench war contrary to my expectations. The Russian ground forces' ability to break through such defences is shockingly and ridiculously marginal - I did not expect that.

This is a shocking display of incompetence in no small part because the recipe for breakthrough has very largely been found in 1917 already (Bruchmüller's artillery tactics and modern infantry training and small unit manoeuvring of Stoßtruppen).  

You don't even need armoured vehicles for it. A skilful and sufficient application of artillery (and nowadays glide bombs) and a simultaneous assault by many infantry sections on a wide-enough sector would do the trick if supported by a few modern ingredients such as barrage jamming in the 0.2...1 kHz band and fragmentation protection vests.

So I decided to write this blog post in order to help readers arrange their thoughts on offensives in an orderly manner:

The forms of attacks are (I rephrase the official lingo a bit here):

1. raid
2. counterattack
   
3. meeting engagement
4. pursuit
5. hasty attack
   
6. deliberate attack with limited objectives
7. breakthrough offensive
   

raid: The usual purpose is to storm one position, take prisoners of war, capture radios, get away without trying to hold any newly gained ground.

counterattack: Can happen from lowest to highest levels. Attackers are particularly vulnerable (position-wise and in terms of morale) to a sudden attack. So often times a company defending a trench system would immediately launch a platoon-sized counterattack when the signal arrives that  enemy assault troops are reaching another platoon's position, for example.

meeting engagement: Both forces are entering battle in a mobile phase of war (does not apply to trench warfare).

pursuit: Similar to meeting engagement, except that one side doesn't want to accept battle other than for purposes of delay at most. Not very relevant in trench warfare.

hasty attack: This is a planned attack with up to a few hours of preparation.

deliberate attack with limited objectives: The Russians do n inept form of this very much. The objective is limited (such as capture this village, eliminate this bridgehead, create a bridgehead, take this hill, take this trench system) and "deliberate" communicates that there was plenty time for preparations.

breakthrough offensive: This is what happens very rarely, mostly by Ukrainians and successfully only against particularly weak Russian sectors (Kharkiv, Kherson and Kursk Oblast offensives).

I wrote before; we know how breakthrough could be achieved. The Russians appear to be too incompetent, the Ukrainians (also quite an 'amateur' army with few peacetime-trained troops) appear to be rather risk-averse and in fear or the consequences of a major defeat in battle.

 

But here's a problem: Breakthrough in itself is of marginal value. Germany broke through the Entente fronts in France in 1918 on unprecedented widths, yet it lost the war months later. The British created a glimpse of how to exploit a breakthrough when they created the "fast" Whippet tank in 1917. Post-WWI they did split up tank development in infantry tanks for breakthrough and cruiser tanks for exploitation. They didn't get much more than that right, though.

Exploitation requires more than just full motorisation and tanks that are faster than a bicycle. The German army developed the attitude and had the superior idea of what exploitation is good for in its Moltke the Elder's Cannae (encirclement battle) fixation. Blitzkrieg was created, characterised by (in 1940 and 1941) hugely successful breakthrough exploitations.

The Russians have another historical root that should and could have informed them how to do things well in a pursuit (Suvorov's battles-winning obsession with quickness and getting into a fight before the enemy is ready for it, on all levels). Imagine a boxing fight in which one boxer is slow and the other lucky punches him before he's got his cover up the first time, then the quicker boxer goes in up close and the hits keep coming till knockout. That's a form of meeting engagement.

The German Blitzkrieg style used some parts of this as well, most notably there was an understanding that a tank division is not very good in positional defence, it should rather defend the flanks of a breakthrough or a bridgehead by attacking. The aim was to overrun the hostile reserves as they move to attack themselves, but haven't deployed for a fight yet.

 

Both the Russian and the Ukrainian side are INCREDIBLY far from the state of art of warfare of 85 years ago and I'm convinced that this is not technology's fault. Technology does NOT keep them from being more competent on the offence.

We should understand that both sides are fairly incompetent at most things. They know most about the state of man-in-the-loop drone warfare and associated electronic warfare, and that's about all their top competence.

The Russian ground forces has been rotten for decades and the quickly mobillised troops are either old or poorly trained, period.

The Ukrainian army has been rotten till 2014, then it tried to get its act together (also lots of warbands/warlord armies/militias that were later integrated into the regular forces). Its budget and thus its means for training had been small until 2022, though. Now they have lots of old and too briefly trained troops that are nowhere near Western conceptions of proper training levels, though they do have wartime experience. Almost all of that wartime experience since 2014 was about positional warfare and attacks with limited objectives and limited means, though. Both old age of infantry and deep experience in positional defence are rather detrimental to breakthrough efforts.

 

Long story short: We do NOT see the state of art of offence and defence in Ukraine and Kursk Oblast. What we see there is more akin to watching the Iraq-Iran (Gulf) War during the 1980's, a war fought with 1970's equipment but (at most) WWI levels of competence.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Infantry section design considerations

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Fantasy force designs are almost a hobby to some people with interest in military affairs. I did very largely resist this albeit I did a couple to bring some points across.Today I'll do another one, at the very basic level: The Infantry section (squad).

I will mention some factors that influence this small unit designing first.

1. Vehicle capacity. Infantry fighting vehicle: Dismount elements in mechanised infantry/Panzergrenadiere have to fit into their battlefield transport vehicles, often seven dismounts. Car size: A commandeered 4x4 car would usually fit no more than four men, albeit five would be possible if they store their kit in the trunk (=low readiness) or if it's considered tolerable for one to sit in the open trunk.
   
2. Buddy principle: Two infantrymen form a buddy team, watching each other, supporting each other psychologically, cross-loading (especially in two-men machinegun teams or anti-tank teams),  leapfrog alternatingly and much more. Furthermore, section leaders have a reduced workload when they only have to deal with buddy teams instead of individuals. Buddy teams may cut the need for intrasquad radios (and their battery supply) by half.
   
3. Fireteam/Trupp: The concept of a three to four men group smaller than a section; as scouting or manoeuvre element. Quasi-permanent fireteams have usually a heterogeneous armament.
   
4. Firepower categories
• aimed single shots,
• bursts (=machinegun or "automatic rifle" job) for suppressive effect, into suspected target locating behind concealment or against fleeting targets (important: ability to sustain bursts despite need to reload or deal with hot barrel)
  
• high explosive projection (throwing range or longer, includes some anti-tank capability
  
5. Ability to continue mission after taking a casualty or more (depends on behaviour; section of six may be incapacitated and obsessed with casualty evacuation after taking one leg shot, but the not injured men might also just continue the mission, with grey zone in between). Rule of thumb would be that you need two men to evacuate one severely wounded man.
6. Platoon-like ambitions: The huge U.S. Marines infantry squads are more like small platoons.
7. Ease of leadership Big sections are difficult to lead; command span at higher levels is often limited to three or four.
   
8. Ability to exploit microterrain: Big sections have difficulty to find enough concealment/stay undetected long enough. More men = more opportunities to make mistakes that endanger the whole section. Scouting detachments are 2-3 men for this reason.
   
9. Ability to keep functioning if not all nominal members of the section are available for a mission. Sections are commonly reduced in size by lack of replacements, soldiers being away, injuries, sickness and many more reasons. Units should probably have supernumerarii (excess personnel) to cope with this, but one might also expect that a section remains capable with less than nominal head count.
10. Head count demands for certain basic capability missions such as 24 hrs picket duty.
11. Considerations of 24/7 360° security effort (difficult to pull off with a strength of two heads, for example).
12. Ability to carry extra stuff, especially mission-specific add-on stuff that's not basic equipment (an example being heavy anti-MBT weapons).
    

So here's a section design that could fit:

5-7 men headcount: 1 section leader + 2 buddy teams (2 grenadiers + 2 automatic riflemen, variable: mixed buddy teams or homogenous buddy teams) + optional buddy team (2 riflemen)

1. Vehicle size: Would fit into IFVs (albeit I could not care less about that)
   
2. Buddy principle: In use except for the section leader (unless the section is at even headcount).
3. Fireteam is not used, although a badly weakened section could end up at fireteam strength.
   
4. Firepower categories: Two aimed shot&HE projection members plus two burst firepower projection members in core team of five, optional buddy team usually adds more single shot firepower and especially more carrying capacity (more munitions for bursts and HE). Burst fire alternates between the two automatic riflemen.
   
5. Ability to continue missions after taking a casualty: Buddy of the buddy team is default carer for a wounded member. Drag to safety, carry to treatment with a combat medic (not section member).
6. Platoon-like ambitions: That's what platoons are for.
7. Ease of leadership: Buddy principle used to reduce the span of command of the section leader to three. 
8. Ability to exploit microterrain: Seven is more able to do so than eight or more, obviously.
   
9. Ability to keep functioning: Section of seven can make do with five (an ability that is a product of doctrine, equipment & training).
10. Head count demands for basic capability missions: Five suffices usually.
    
11. Considerations of security effort: Five suffices.
12. Ability to carry extra stuff: Whole optional buddy team available as porters, for their basic equipment is minimised.
    

What's "unusual" in this section design? It takes self-discipline to plan for two riflemen without much basic equipment load (other than rifle/carbine and its munitions). 'Normal' force design would not have that at all.

Weaknesses of this section design:

• There's no wizardry, so you cannot have huge firepower such as two medium/universal machineguns plus multi-shot automatic grenade launcher plus section commando mortar plus anti-MBT weapon in such a small section. I understand many people would prefer to replace one automatic riflemen with a real machinegunner. That's doable by temporarily allotting an actual machinegun if the headcount is at least six (else it's IMO too much weight unless it's about trench defence). It would even be possible to use two temporarily allotted machineguns in trench defence (because trench defence is least sensitive to heavy burdens).
• No strongly penetrating & long distance accurate 'designated marksman rifle'. Automatic rifle/assault rifle/carbine use the same magazines and munition. The addition of a different calibre would cause headaches. The use of a powerful calibre by the whole squad means excessive weight = less agile = less survivable outside of trench fights
  
• The "grenadiers" would be the ones assaulting a building with demolition charges and hand grenades or lead a trench-clearing action, thus getting more typically close with the enemy than the automatic riflemen. Getting close means sights should be optimal for close up, not optimised for long distances. The automatic riflemen would have their weapons shot hot (and thus inaccurate) often, so cannot really deliver accurate single shots at long (in this case 200+ m) distances. The section leader must not reduce himself to tunnel vision. So who is going to be red dot sight user (optimal for short distances), who is going to be magnifying sight user (tunnel vision if more than 1.5x, optimal for long distances*)?
  

 

The inspiration to go for 5-7 was actually a book on Panzergrenadiere in WW2, in which the author recalled that the nominally larger sections quickly shrank to 5-7 members and then remained at that strength for quite a while.Sections larger than seven would be too difficult to lead, experienced section leaders would even leave men behind rather than going into battle with a bigger section than seven.**

So next time you see a section design discussion (such as about whether a new combat transport vehicle should have seating for seven or eight dismounts), you have (I presume) a couple more ways to judge the opinions brought forward.

related:

youtube.com/watch?v=2s_rowtboNI&list=PLwb1pjLd3hpLpFiEUJiSL4F7Q295HxoQ7

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Magnifying sights are also very helpful for identification purposes, but identifying hostiles or friendlies would be the section leader's job. He has the binoculas that the sectionneeds for picket duty and calling in fire support anyway. The section leader controls the section firepower and has a lot of demanding special tasks like this one.

**: I never saw this claim corroborated elsewhere, though. Source "Die Panzergrenadiere" F.M. von Senger und Etterlin, J.F: Lehmans Verlag, 1961, page 102

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The direct/indirect fires armour battalion - tactics

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I realised that I didn't describe the tactics for the armour battalion for the exploitation brigade properly.

That battalion has four companies of tanks that are very good at shooting with high explosive rounds in indirect fire (up to 42° maximum elevation, with sufficient accuracy out to 15 km).

The idea is this:

The companies tend to manoeuvre as such (platoons maybe spread over 3x2 km). A pair of companies is close at all times, so there are two pairs manoeuvring around.

Now one company gets into contact with dangerous hostiles. The nearby other company of the pair moves into flanking position. They might also act as a leapfrogging couple in a delaying mission or during advance.

The other pair can do the very same, and whenever a pair is ion contact the other pair (about 4x3=12 tanks per company) would be available and be at a good distance for giving indirect fire support with good effect (this would be difficult at short distances in many terrain forms).

This is part of the reason why it makes sense to have four tank companies in that battalion, not three. With three you'd have either two companies giving such indirect fire support or one indirect and one direct fires (line of sight) support. That's A LOT less and would not suffice, as the brigade was designed to not require a separate artillery battalion (there are a few mortars in the concept, though).

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Maneuver / manoeuvre - an elegant military theory framework - Part IV: Applications and consequencs of the new definition

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Maneuver/manoeuvre is movement to exploit superior readiness.

1. This definition is not limited to the age of firearms.
2. It's giving manoeuvre a purpose, which helps guiding the mind to what's important.
3. Manoeuvre does by this  definition not include almost all retrograde movements (withdrawal, delay, retreat), regardless of whether fighting goes on or not.
4. As per the additional remarks in the last post, the movement may create the readiness advantage. Encirclement gives readiness advantage by cutting the enemy's supply lines (+ morale effects). A flank attack may generate surprise and may overstretch the defences. 
5. The superior readiness may also exist prior to the manoeuvre, and the movement means immediate exploitation of superior readiness.
6. Classic manoeuvre such as the oblique order attack at Leuthen or Washington's sneak night attack across the Delaware river would not qualify as manoeuvre under some definitions. They do qualify as manoeuvre under my definition.
7. The definition is applicable at all levels from individual soldier to an entire corps moving as part of a theatre commander's plan.
8. The definition includes a one-size-fits-all definition of relative fitness for the fight ("readiness"), which directs attention to creating an advantage in this.
9. "to exploit" implies that manoeuvre is a voluntary leadership decision. Some other definitions pretend that it's also maneuver (manoeuvre) when a driver is running away from enemy infantry and occasionally firing at burst at their general direction.
10. This definition does not render the "attritionist" vs. "maneuver warfare" discussion moot. Discussions are fine to attract people to military theory and to educate them. A discussion such as the aforementioned one may even make sense when the conclusion should have been obvious 40 years ago.
11. The definition makes it almost trivially easy to recognise that manoeuvre will never be entirely obsolete or out of fashion. It made sense even in 1915, when trench raids with limited objectives were conducted with planning and surprise advantage with the limited objective of snatching some POWs for interrogation.
12. It's also almost trivially easy to recognise  that manoeuvre cannot be the correct tactical answer at all times. You do not always have (or can create) superior readiness that could be exploited by movement.
13. The definition does not show that manoeuvre is typically leading to a quicker conclusion of a battle than attrition by firepower without movement. A definition doesn't need to include the information about this fact, though.
14. Regrettably, the definition required additional remarks to assist in the correct (as per the author) interpretation. "The movement can create or improve the superior readiness, for example by encirclement, by shock or by the morale effect of arriving reinforcements. The exploitation can happen in the near future, enabled by the movement." To avoid this would have complicated the definition too much IMO.
15. Another downside is that it requires an understanding of the term "readiness" as defined by me.
16. The definition appreciates the value of "shaping the battlefield", as it's an activity to create superior readiness.
    
17. Definitions that tie movement to firepower emphasise firepower/lethality more, and thus lead thoughts astray. My definition emphasised movement and readiness. The emphasis on movement  (regardless of firepower) helps with recognizing the importance of rapidity for exploiting or creating opportunities. An ordinary definition would rather lead to thoughts about how much suppressive fires are needed.
18. The Boyd apostles will likely not find this definition to be incompatible to their faith, but they'd likely want to add their 'quicker cycling' fixation to it. They might add (at the end of the definition) "by running the OODA loop quicker" or something similar.
19. The definition can be applied to naval, air and space just as to land warfare. Americans may (as they're much more militaristic than Europeans) also apply it to business, as they did before with Sun Tzu and some other military theory.
    

related:

/2016/07/decision-by-attrition-or-decision-by.html

This definition will not be used by armies in their field manuals. It's meant to advance & provoke military theory discussions, not as copy&paste content for a field manual revision.

 S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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Maneuver / manoeuvre - an elegant military theory framework - Part III: Definition of Maneuver / Manoeuvre

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A definition serves the purpose to enable clear communication about an abstract thing or concept. A good definition also makes thought about it easier and gives it clarity.

I offer to you a re-definition of maneuver / manoeuvre for these purposes.

First, though, let's look at the definition of "maneuver" by the biggest Western military:

Maneuver is movement in conjunction with fires (ADP 3-90).
The purpose of maneuver is to gain and exploit positions of relative advantage to accomplish the mission.

https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN38160-FM_3-90-000-WEB-1.pdf

It's also one of the most crappy definitions of "maneuver" I've ever seen if not the worst ever. It supposes that there was no maneuver before the invention of firearms. To sneak into the rear of a n enemy position is not "maneuver" according to the U.S. Army. That's ridiculous.

You may also note that the maneuver vs. attrition debate was 'solved' by the official American (Army) definition of maneuver in a most lazy way; maneuver was defined as moving in battle while someone non-hostile shoots. This didn't answer the debate that started in the early 80's; it sabotaged it. Americans cannot discuss maneuver vs. attrition if they stick to their official definition.

My encounters with such crappy professional insider works are the reason why I dare to voice dissent instead of being in awe of the established paradigms.

My definition for manoeuvre/maneuver:

Maneuver/manoeuvre is movement to exploit superior readiness.

Important remarks for interpretation:

1. The movement can create or improve the superior readiness, for example by encirclement, by shock or by the morale effect of arriving reinforcements.
2. The exploitation can happen in the near future, enabled by the movement. 
   

The next part of the series will look at consequences and benefits of this definition.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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Maneuver / manoeuvre - an elegant military theory framework - Part II: Readiness

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Back in September 1939 a section of German infantrymen entered a Polish barn and went to sleep in the straw. One man woke up the next morning from a separate and very high sleeping position, and what we saw was terrible: All his comrades of the section had their throats slit over night.

It doesn't even matter whether this anecdote from a book is true or not; it reminds us convincingly that even a granny with a kitchen knife (or a brick) is a match for a trained and armed infantry section if only the latter is not ready for a fight. They were definitely not ready for encountering even a single hostile while they slept.

This serves to illustrate the importance of readiness for a (particular) fight as a single variable descriptor of the odds of combat. Combat troops vs. support troops, first world vs. third world, gucci spec ops gear vs. self-made clubs - the readiness for a (particular fight) can be considered as a universal single variable descriptor. Training, equipment, health, morale, position, formation, terrain, time of day, weather and supplies all affect readiness, but there are many more input factors.

My definition for readiness for combat:

Readiness (for combat) is the fitness to succeed in a fight at this time and place.

The fight may be ongoing, commence right now or be started very soon (before readiness can be improved by much).

To have such a single variable description for the ex ante odds of prevailing in combat is hugely useful for the understanding of maneuver / maoneuvre in my opinion.

I understand that this definition of "readiness" is not practical for everyday use in armed forces training. It's relational; armed forces would want a metric that a unit can achieve by itself, and would include things like 'is qualified on equipment', has completed unit-level training exercise', 'has 80+% deployable and present personnel'. I'd rather call that "state of training" and "deployability", and the existence of such terms means that a definition of readiness doesn't need to answer non-battlefield needs.

The next part of the series will introduce a definition for maneuver / manoeuvre that uses "readiness".

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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Maneuver / manoeuvre - an elegant military theory framework - Part I: Maneuver/manoeuvre, published military theory debates

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"Maneuver warfare" or "Third Generation Warfare", as it was termed by a group of American theorists, is widely considered to be an alternative approach for winning battles and campaigns to the attritionist approach.

The attritionist approach is very much about finding targets, shooting at them and eliminating them from the balance of forces in the fight or campaign. It works. The issues with it are that it's often rather slow and you need to really good at it, for else you may suffer unacceptable losses by attrition yourself.

Maneuver is different. Let's look at a simplistic platoon-level tactical problem; an enemy section of infantry is in a free-standing farmhouse, and a platoon has to pass that area, so this threat needs to be eliminated.

The attritionist ideal is to call in fires that destroy the infantry section in the building, likely destroying the building in the process. A guided bomb might be dropped on it from an aircraft, for example. "Artillery destroys, infantry occupies." is an example for this approach/attitude.

A maneuvrist ideal is to feign an attack from one direction, then assault the building with a section from another section with the advantage of suppressive fires by small arms. The assault team takes the enemy by surprise and wins the fight inside, ideally more by taking prisoners than by killing. The building merely has a couple bullet holes and interior damaged by hand grenades.

A campaign-level example for attrition could be the decision to shell and bomb the hostile army until it's bled white or its morale crumbles (this happened to 1917 Russia, 1918 Germany, 1945 Germany, 1973 U.S.).

A campaign-level maneuvrist approach would be to break through the front to seek encirclement(s) (and surrender) of so much hostile army power that the hostile leadership loses hope and surrenders.

- - - - -

There have been discussions about which approach is more promising for generations. Likewise, there have been discussions about whether this or that approach is obsolete, usually based on recent events. The current Russo-Ukrainian War may serve as an occasion to claim that maneuver is dead. The focus on artillery shell deliveries and the plethora of war porn gore videos of killing and destruction fits to this very well.

I will not recount all those previous debates here (that would require a book, not a few blog posts); instead, I will introduce a new definition of maneuver/manoeuvre. I'm usually no friend of modifying definitions, but at times it's advisable to give more clarity of thought on the topic and to make the topic easier to understand. I'm convinced that my definition does indeed help a lot.

First, I need to introduce another definition in the next post, though; it's about a term that is part of my maneuver/manoeuvre definition.

(The other parts will follow sooner than weekly.)

part II:

/2023/08/maneuver-manoeuvre-elegant-military_01636758904.html

part III:

/2023/08/maneuver-manoeuvre-elegant-military_01157467691.html

part IV:

/2023/08/maneuver-manoeuvre-elegant-military_5.html

 
S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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"What happened to the near ambush?"

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I remember an article headline from one of the U.S. Army journals (90's); IIRC it was "What happened to the close ambush?". I don't remember the  article content, but I remember the headline, for it's an example for how tactics sometimes fluctuate in their popularity.

A near ambush is an ambush in which the ambushers allow the enemy to get quite close, maybe 60 m, before they start killing. The opposite is the now fashionable desire to shoot any all detected and identified enemies, even at ranges not traditionally considered infantry combat ranges.

My opinion is something in between; I want infantry sections to be very effective against infantry out to 200 m, maybe 300 m (with support weapons shooting farther, of course). That may sound short distance nowadays, but that's because people have lost the understanding how far away 200 or 300 m actually are. I can look out of my living room window and see 50+ positions at which I'd have great difficulty to timely detect a camouflaged rifleman with Mk 1 Eyeball sensors. That's all within a 160° cone of only 20...100 m length! Open fields aren't necessarily better; some fields were harvested, but the stems are still there and both the sunflower and the corn fields could easily conceal entire cars from view at a mere 20 m distance.

To shoot at long distance serves to slow down any hostile advance and channels it into microterrain that offers concealment, which in turn offers defenders the opportunity to hit moving hostiles with indirect fires aimed at such (in some areas rare) terrain features. The downside of shooting at long distances is that you give away your presence, possibly even your exact location.

The idea of the near ambush is rather lethality; infantry firepower is devastating at such a distance.

The book "War Games" by Leo Murray ( a book about combat psychology) offers an interesting and presumably important psychological detail: Assaults often collapse at a certain distance; the distance where the attackers are at a point of no return. Either they press on with the attack or they withdraw now. To advance and not press on to the enemy's position would be suicide. Leo Murray offers 60 m at a possible such point of no return distance. That happens to be what I remember as a typical near ambush distance (though no doubt different armies in different decades had varying opinions about this).

It might be that the near ambush is a very risky tactic simply because it leaves the hostiles no choice to run; and we WANT the hostiles to run. We ALWAYS want them to run. Hostiles running away from us is GOOD (as long as they're no steppe horse archers). We never want them to fight, certainly not within hand grenade throwing range (~30 m) to us.

This reminds me of how the usual talk about infantry combat ranges is too devoid of tactics and (certain) combat psychology considerations. Combat psychology would favour long ranges, tactics would favour rather short ranges. I suppose that people who are outspoken in their preference for long ranges ('We want to return fire to the Taleban's harassing PKM fires from the distant ridgeline!') just give in to their own combat psychology. Moreover, the effect of equipment weight (and the effect of range requirements on equipment weight) seems to be underappreciated. The videos from Ukraine clearly don't show infantry as overburdened in battle as the imagery from Afghanistan.

related:

/2009/07/infantry-combat-ranges.html 

/2011/11/sniping-history-theory.html

/2012/08/the-soldier-load-problem.html

/2017/06/self-discipline-and-light-weight.html

/2017/09/hard-body-armour-possible-compromise.html

/2018/05/ultralightweight-infantry.html

/2022/10/short-and-long-range-infantry.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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"Russian fortifications present an old problem for Ukraine"

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engelsbergideas.com/essays/russian-fortifications-present-an-old-problem-for-ukraine/

It's not a bad article, but I disagree because it omits three important things;

• the failure of the Iraqi field fortifications in 1991
• that NATO would not have given Russia the time to create a layered 1,000 km uninterrupted field fortification system
• that Ukrainian forces are very different from what NATO would field, particularly in regard to air power

The lesson may rather be that Ukrainians cannot overcome layered Russian field fortifications (time will tell), that would have political consequences, for the conflict would then be frozen along the approx. frontline of today.

I looked at many overhead photos of Russian field fortifications. Some of them may have been sloppy decoy positions, but I didn't see a single field fortification with a good layout. They looked mostly frontally-oriented, the trenches didn't have enough turns, there were no parapets, no overhead concealment, no camouflage and I saw but once a fighting position with overhead cover. Most overhead cover seemed to consist of mere sleeping holes dug into the side of trenches. I didn't see proper 360° defence layouts and I didn't see proper interlocking fires.

/2009/12/field-fortifications-angle-bastion.html

The obstacles are anti-tank trenches (easily overcome with at most two minutes delay using WWI-style fascine bundles or post WW2-style assault bridgelayers), some farcical dragon's teeth that didn't even stop the SUV-mobile incursions at Belgorod (and can easily be blown away by tank gun, autocannon, heavy machineguns and hand-emplaced demolition charges a well as pushed away with AFV dozer blades) and finally anti-tank mines.

The anti-tank mines are WW2-style pressure-activated models and a presumably tiny quantity of very modern jumping mines (though certainly not enough to reliably prevent mineclearing by flail-type mineclearing tanks).

I do respect this seemingly gap-less anti-tank mine belt (that also appear to have multiple layers) as an obstacle, but the other man-made Russian obstacles are crap. Germany was never good at clearing minefields, and our only mineclearing AFVs couldn't even resist 1960's anti-tank guided missiles for lack of ERA (the Ukrainians would fix that real quick with Kontakt-1 if we were to donate the Keiler AFVs).

Minefields (and mine belts) didn't receive terribly much attention in the past couple decades, and in my opinion what little progress was made was about the needs of NGOs who demine areas post-War. I am not aware of progress in forcing a path through a defended minefield in 1992-2021. Recently it became apparent that at least some AT mines could be found with overhead imagery (visual and infrared spectra), which raises the possibility that the key to pierce AT mine belts may be a timely detection and thorough reconnaissance. I want to be explicit here; I'm not talking about dismounted sappers crawling forward. This would only work in wet high grass/bush areas. It would be suicidal in face of thermal sight-equipped snipers and machinegunners everywhere else.

Moreover, the Western modern system strives to overcome resistance and obstacles with combined arms efforts and then to exploit successes by moving quickly with so much protection and firepower that the encountered further resistance would not stand a chance, likely not even offer much of a fight. The culminating point of this might be logistical (after 2-4 days depending on whether supply convoys arrive), but it might also be after four days of manoeuvre due to sleep deprivation.

Betz appears to suggest that we would fail at the breakthrough (overcoming resistance initially), which simply doesn't seem plausible to me. Mines are messy, but can be overcome even without specialised gear if you accept some losses (which is a requirement for being able to fight in a war). We would not wait till there's a triple layer 1,000 km AT mine belt anyway. We could focus air power within hours at any 10 km breakthrough sector along a 1,000 km frontline. Imagine the effect of a thousand quite precise 500 lbs bombs on a 10,000 km wide sector. NATO could deliver this this amount of precise bombs several times on a single breakthrough day. Would the Russian army really be able to counter-concentrate its reserves at breakthrough areas in time? Would the Russian army have the morale to offer a good fight at all? They had millions of artillery munitions in stock, but they would have needed months to expend that on us, whereas we could have finished their unimpressive less than 300,000 army troops within weeks, I suppose.

Western force structures, force management and procurement sucks, but I don't see it being the paper to Russia's scissors (layered field fortification belts). We would break through. There's always room for improvement, but anti-tank mines as we know them haven't stopped offensives in WW2 and won't in the future.

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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