Remote control Sturmgewehr 44

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I usually dump links about noteworthy small arms-related things at Steve of the Firearm Blog instead of blogging about the stuff myself, but this time he blogged about something I cannot resist but repeat:

A Syrian rebel (probably more than one) has a remote controlled Sturmgewehr 44, and they probably have thousands of these assault rifles (which already made an appearance in Lebanon three decades ago).

It's a reminder how old, even first generation, equipment can sometimes keep its utility for many decades. The Sturmgewehr 44 would still be quite useful as a standard infantry rifle even as of today, albeit it isn't very accurate and the bullet is rather heavy. After all, it's not much inferior to an AKM if produced under peacetime conditions. The effective range was 200 metres, and modern infantry would prefer 300 metres, though.

By the way; the "Sturm" in Sturmgewehr is one of two Nazi mid- to late-WW2  propaganda things, where they attempted to make something more respectable by renaming it.

Infantry was renamed into Grenadiere (grenadiers) which were a bit better paid, slightly special infantrymen in the 18th century. This still survives in the German Panzergrenadiere (mechanised infantry).

The word "Sturm" (storm, assault) was similarly slapped onto many things, from casemate gun infantry tanks (assault guns) to automatic carbines and an early grenade pistol. The original word used for the early versions in the Sturmgewehr 44 development history were named either Maschinenpistole (submachine gun, for irrational political purposes) or Maschinenkarabiner. What we know today as Sturmgewehr category was back in the late 30's a Maschinenkarabiner - a much better designation for the category.

I'd really like to hear "Maschinenkarabiner" more often.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Building vs. Mobilizing

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The modern idea of a politician's job is (in part) that (s)he ought to develop and propose improvements, to build a better government for the people. The idea is that this convinces additional voters and enables the most useful politicians to gain and hold political office.

Politicians even in modern democracies rarely follow this desirable pattern, though. Instead, they spend a substantial share of their energy especially during election campaigns on "firing up" pre-existing followers. The build-up of the political base is often considered to be less decisive than the mobilisation of the already existing political base.

This is very interesting even in a blog as this, for there are similarities to warfare. The modern idea of warfare is that forces shall be built up for (or preferably against) warfare. This sounds self-evident, but it wasn't always so. Up until medieval times, many kings weren't really able to build up forces. They had their vassals and vassal's vassals and the latter's servants. Preparations for warfare were often not so much about improving their equipment, horses, training or quantity as about ensuring their loyalty so enough would join the banner when the king calls.

This was even more extreme 2,000+ years ago when such codified leader-follower relationships didn't really exist. The leaders had to convince other men to join for a campaign, and had likely zero influence on which kind of equipment they brought along, or what kind of training they had. Leadership back then wasn't about building strength; it was about firing up the base in order to mobilise enough supporters for the moment of decision.

Just as in modern elections.

It's noteworthy that even as of today, the old warband model and the old behaviour patterns are still relevant. The rebels in Syria did not follow a pre-existing feudal model or were based on pre-existing government institutions. They developed bottom-up, and I suppose a close study would reveal patterns known throughout almost all known history. The very same patterns might also be of great utility not only in understanding what's going on elsewhere, but whenever we ourselves face great organisational challenges.

related
2009-12 Natural, self-organised units?
2010-10 Self-organization; Online gamer clans and Germanic warbands
2012-08 More on self-organisation

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Stephen Walt's comment on a gesture towards Iran

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Stephen Walt has a gem in his blog:

For Haass (and many other Americans, one suspects), Obama was being incredibly generous last week. In Haass's mind, saying that the world's most powerful country won't seek regime change in Iran is a wonderful gift, a lavish sign of American goodwill. Never mind that overthrowing the Iranian regime would be an illegal act of war. Never mind that Haass would probably not see a pledge by Rouhani that Iran does not seek regime change in America as giving the United States "quite a lot."

This attitude is symptomatic of an enduring U.S. foreign policy mindset: Overthrowing other governments is just one of those "normal" options that we keep in our foreign-policy tool kit, and telling another country we won't actually use it this time is a really big sacrifice on our part. Haass probably thinks it is, because he was openly calling for the United States to topple the clerics back in 2010. And he now thinks those pesky Iranians ought to be grateful that Obama didn't follow his advice.

Similarly, it is not an act of generosity for the United States to "accept" Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear program. That right is enshrined in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which Iran is a signatory.

America's Empty Gestures Toward Iran

By Stephen M. Walt

I agree and would like to add that the U.S. also signed and ratified the NPT and thus long ago accepted Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear program*. It furthermore deposited after Iran did so, thus in effect recognizing Iran's right not just in general.

The bigger point is a different one than the technicalities, though: It is a common pattern in both domestic and international conflicts that certain incompatibilities occur because the agents have utterly different views of the world, utterly different perceptions. The Vietnamese were essentially fighting a war of national unification in the 60's, with a kind of Bolshevism as the icing of the cake. The Americans misunderstood this as a step in a global communist master plan. The misunderstanding killed more than a million people.

There's also an incompatibility between a few countries asserting extraordinary justifications and responsibilities (with the club known as NATO joining this group), a group of countries which don't feel threatened by this behaviour but usually prefer a rule of law, a group of countries apathetic on the issues and a group of countries feeling negatively affected by the assertions and pushing back to some degree.

The miscommunication on this is epic.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: See the preamble of the NPT ("Affirming the principle ...") here

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Field manuals

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I was no enthusiastic reader of German field manuals back when I was in uniform. The very title - "Dienstvorschrift" (~service regulation) was repelling; its tone has a promise of even more orders. You already get ordered around enough when you're in uniform, unless you are at the top where you have to instead lick the boots of career politicians instead.

In the end, it didn't hurt me; reducing field manual reading to the minimum early on helped me to keep an open mind.

To read more field manuals doesn't teach one much anyway; the pedagogy for adults had made huge improvements during the last two generations, but field manuals have actually recessed in quality.

The three best approaches for military education which I have so far found and could serve as alternative to field manuals are mostly old, and now uncommon:
 

(1) The Fibeln from WW2. Tigerfibel, Pantherfibel, Schiessfibel - humorously illustrated guides which not only keep attention up, but also focus on what's important. I suppose this format is very advisable in its niche; routines.

Tigerfibel page; this style of illustration fell out of fashion
during the 60's, likely due to improved printing technology

(2) Eike Middeldorff's style of writing books (1950's), specifically Handbuch der Taktik. It is loaded with details and no doubt based on specific assumptions. Still, it's much more pleasant reading and much more informative than all field manuals I've seen so far (=too many).

(3) The style applied in "Kriegsnah ausbilden - Hilfen für den Gefechtsdienst aller Truppen"

Honourable mention goes to John F.Antal who produced readable books which did cast stereotypical  U.S.Army doctrine into decision-making game books during the 90's. Nice try, but very limited in terms of lessons.

Another honourable mention goes to Paul Ritschard, a Swissman who attempted to communicate the very basics in a book ("Einführung in die Taktik", 1990).
The Austrian book publications of the Truppendienst Taschenbuch series are also better than corresponding Austrian field manuals (in my experience - I didn't compare many of them).

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The modern education approach.

At a university you don't simply learn the symptoms in science classes, as you would learn to choose a route for driving in an armour course. Instead, you learn about the why. A lot. Science education can be obsessed with educating about the evidence background for the really, really simple and handy formula which you actually are supposed to understand.

The advantage of such an approach is that it prepares you for instances when the problem is a bit different than the textbook example. The aforementioned armour course attendee may for example learn to drive along the edge of woodland to avoid early detection by tanks or ATGM teams 2 km away - thus gaining the few critical seconds to survive. The very same route may be suicidal if the main threat aren't main battle tanks and anti-tank guided missiles, but infantry anti-tank weapons and mines. 

I'm not making this up*.

I recently read the U.S.Army field manual about counter-rocket artillery mortar and compared it with what I wrote about the topic. The FM looks like a technical guide specifically for the Iraq occupation by comparison. It doesn't educate more than a checklist would.

It is about time to scale back the bureaucratic style of field manuals. Field manuals shall educate first and foremost. The writers should shed the pro forma blather, make them more readable, should pay much more attention to psychology (both of the reader and on the battlefield) and should pay more attention to organisational and battlefield dynamics as well as changing environments.

Most importantly: We need to make field manuals more ambitious. Modern field manuals (more than some historical ones) appear to be written for the dumbest fifth of the troops, including the dumbest fifth of NCOs and officers. The authors could still separate the basics from the difficult content, but the difficult, thinking-heavy content is the most important. The dumbest fifth isn't going to win our battles and campaigns anyway, and your odds are clearly suboptimal if you didn't elevate your smartest four fifth of leadership to a high level of professional education.

Don't leave the sophisticated stuff all to the trainers in courses. Especially not so if you trained them with dumbed-down lessons as well. The stuff shall be printed on paper to be useful, not to be the bare bones.**
 

Sven O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: AnwFE 224/120 411/2 printed1998

**: There is a saying about how one should not write or print anything one intends to keep a secret, though.

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Milporn against racism

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I am from time to time exposed to some dangerous idiots. Regrettably, they're everywhere.

One of these dangerous idiots recited a talking point which appears to be semi-popular among the racists among the dangerous idiots: Scientists claim that there's no real race difference in a scientific sense and we're all one species with minimal (though at times visible) differences. Well, racists get cognitive dissonance from this in their little grey matter. So they apparently made up the notion that blacks are still different (inferior) because they lack several per cent DNA from Neanderthals.

Well, next time you encounter such an idiot, agonise him with some well-deserved cognitive dissonance, please:

All humans share about 99% of their DNA with Chimpanzees and Bonobos. Obviously (obvious to any non-idiot), there can't be such a thing as several per cent DNA difference between Europeans and Africans.

Racists think humans differ noticeably when the difference is in reality as if one Leopard 2 tank was painted light green and its engine equipped for multi fuel while another Leopard 2 tank was painted in dark green and guzzling diesel only. Who cares? It's still the same thing.

If only the dangerous idiots wouldn't mess up so much. We should keep them away from political power (other than voting) at the very least!

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Political reforms in mature countries

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This is a copy of a comment I gave elsewhere (FM). It's not directly about defence or freedom, but indirectly it's relevant. It helps to understand the diminishing freedom of action of mature / sophisticated countries' governments. The effects of what I describe are running parallel to the Solow-Swan model's predicted effects and the resources allocation stickiness I wrote about in June.

"People seeking to reform [a country] typically search for a list of policies that will cause [the people] to rally around."
I'm not sure if this is accurate, but it would be a folly if true.

A few categories of policies:
popular & effective - done already
popular & ineffective - some are law of the land
unpopular & ineffective - very rare
unpopular & effective - rarely done yet

A country with an already mature set of policies has mostly the unpopular & effective policies left for its own improvement. The repealing of popular&ineffective policies makes up most of their other good options.
Neither is going to rally many supporters.

Next, this mini-model can be enlarged by splitting popularity between popularity among the voter base and among the sponsor base. Again, what's left are the political actions which would at least alienate one of both, for the common ground policies are already in place.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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[Deutsch] Polit-Talkshows von ARD und ZDF

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Empfohlene Lektüre:
http://blog.magitek.de/polit-talkshows-von-ard-und-zdf-objektiv-und-unparteilich-war-gestern/

(A quick and dirty study about how German public TV stations have invited ruling coalition members and small parties disproportionally, clearly favouring the ruling coalition and especially the conservatives.)

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Attack helicopters

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It's no secret that I'm not a fan of a large army aviation (helicopter) branch. Some Western army aviation branches have slid towards gold-plating since the late 70's and failed to deliver on the promises. Army helicopters are also a huge fiscal and logistical pain in the cushions.

There are four distinct dominant modes of attack helicopter (in a wide sense) operations;

Alouette helicopter with SS.11 ATGMs

(1) The standoff approach. Anti-tank helicopters hover close to friendlies, serving as a very mobile floating anti-tank missile launcher system. These may have great use for theatre command because this way 50+ ATGM launcher systems can be moved by almost 100 km in 30 minutes. This mode of operation doesn't require much; you can bolt on ATGM launchers onto a civilian helicopter or a utility helicopter, bolt on a stabilised optic for fire control and that's it. The West German PAH-1 followed this concept, as did Gazelles and Alouettes and Hughes 500 Defender series models.* The conversion is so affordable that there have been dozens such conversions.

The biggest problem to this concept was the introduction of self-propelled anti air gun systems such as Gepard and "Shilka" which made this tactic much more dangerous. You need at the very least a radar warning receiver to cope with this problem.

 
A more careful attack helicopter would strive to expose itself only as much as necessary, if possible only a mast-mounted (top) stabilised sensor. This behaviour largely eliminates the bird's view advantage and reduces the field of vision to rather short ranges on many forms of terrain. The required very low level flight reduces the advantage of the helicopter over soft ground vehicles mostly to its greater speed, which may easily mean it just gets more opportunities to run into trouble.

(2) Climb, approach, hit and run. The Soviets liked this most. The attack helicopter climbs, spots the target, flies a bit towards it and fires with unguided rockets and an autocannon with limited field of fire (forward). This tactic was likely the explanation for why some Russian attack helicopters have an almost fixed gun. It also requires heavy hardening for vital components and the crew.

This tactic turned out to be not such a great idea once the helicopter faced at least ManPADS or other basic very short range air defence systems. It was a great success in the very early 80's over Afghanistan, though.

The U.S.Army also liked this approach a lot before the TOW missile and the impression left by Shilkas changed the picture. This largely explains the genesis of the AH-56A Cheyenne program.

(3) Hover or circle high and shoot at ground-bound opposition preferably with a fully movable autocannon. This is what we know from milporn videos of Apaches killing insurgents in Iraq. It doesn't work at all in face of effective air defences (same fate as fixed wing gunship tactics and related loitering flying drone tactics).

(4) Infiltrate with a helicopter's unimpeded high mobility over all terrains (but high mountains), then proceed to attack the enemy's rear area. This was typically advocated by the most ambitious army aviation branches; dominantly in the U.S.Army, but it was also advocated by Simpkin and exploited by the German Heer to justify the Tiger and NH90 programs during the budget squeeze of the 90's (long dropped since).
In theory, this yields easy success against supply columns, low readiness combat troops, headquarters and so on. In practice it first and foremost requires a much more sophisticated helicopter than mode (1); armour, more versatile fire control, a gun, unguided rockets, a second engine, long endurance, versatile armament, radar/missile/gunfire warning and locating sensors, possibly an obstacle avoidance sensor (to avoid power lines at night), long-range radios, missile countermeasures et cetera.

The problems with this tactic are that the helicopters expose themselves to much hostile fire (including small arms fire and heavy machinegun fire against which a 100% passive protection is impossible) and the endurance is still a problem.

An air mechanisation approach which meant to provide such attack helicopters with utility helicopter escorts for command/control, electronic warfare, infantry 360° security on the ground during breaks and refuelling capacity was developed and ranks high among the least cost-efficient army concepts ever devised.
The low tech ambush against a AH-64 Apache-equipped regiment in 2003 which downed one Apache* and damaged 28 others has forced many to re-evaluate the survivability of attack helicopters over hostile or contested ground in a conflict with an actually competent opponent.

It would be pointless if I pretended to draw conclusions from these four modes. Fact is, I described these modes years after having drawn my conclusions:

I'm for some cost-effective utility helicopters (such as the Dhruv). Some of these could be equipped as basic anti-tank helicopters in order to provoke potential adversaries to waste resources on countermeasures and in order to distort their tactics with a bit caution.

I also see a niche for a few heavylift helicopters, albeit all but the Mi-26 seem to be ridiculously overpriced these days and the Mi-26 is too big and too expensive in operation.

The glorified thoroughbred attack helicopters - well, I don't think that they're worth the fiscal and logistical hassle in face of a really dangerous opponent. And we would have done something really wrong if we face not really dangerous opponents, for it's almost unheard-of that inferior powers attack a powerful alliance.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

edit: Another blog detailing Hind tactics over Afghanistan

*: The success of anti-tank helicopters depends a lot on the spectacular outcome of remarkable exercises in Germany on civilian property (tanks were even allowed to run over fences) in '73/'74. These pitted helicopters with 3,750 km range TOW missiles against tanks and M163 SPAAGs with a 20 mm gatling gun which was limited in range to about 2,000 m. It was a turkey shooting for the helicopters and the kill ratio ranged from 3:1 to 14:1 in their favour. Suitable countermeasures changed the picture dramatically and the M163s VADS was no adequate representation of Soviet "Shilka" anyway.
**: Published at the time as a "Iraqi farmer shot down a American helicopter with his rifle" story.

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The Peter Principle and multinational cooperation

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The European unification of the post-WW2 era started out small, with some rather rerassuring cooperation. It quickly escalated and grabbed some low-hanging fruit: Tarriffs and visa requirements were removed. More cooperation followed, but the low-hanging fruits with great benefits at small costs were already gone. 

European unification had turned into an ideology, though: To further European unification became considered a "pro" argument for new cooperation treaties or EC/EU actions in itself. it had become anend in itself, instead of a means.

Sooner or later some new European cooperation was bound to deliver less benefits than it incurred costs. I think the common currency is such a case* and the infamous bureaucratic excesses are other such cases.

I mentioned before how Niskanen's budget-maximising model of a bureaucracy explains such behaviour. Well, a different way to describe it is to apply the Peter Principle: Multinational cooperation (or bureaucracies) expand until they passed the optimum size. They may even expand to a point at which the net benefit is close to zero - especially if a step back is less possible than the clearly unsatisfactory total unravelling. The European Unification moved forward until it moved into territory which it couldn't master at all.

NATO has in my opinion shown similar behaviour, and I don't mean its expansion into East Europe:

The benefits of the classic defensive alliance were huge at least during the time of the Cold War. The Soviet Union with its satellites' auxiliary forces could have overwhelmed or isolated Western countries piecemeal if we hadn't stood together. The benefits of the new NATO playgrounds (military interventions, occupations and blue helmet missions) on the other hand are much less evident. In fact, the cost/benefit ratio may actually be horrible.

Still, reversing course is tricky (not as tricky as with the EU and Euro currency, though) and defendants quickly conjure the image of all or nothing; either play along fully or no alliance at all.

It seems to me as if a sternly modest approach towards bureaucracies and also multinational cooperation would be advisable. We shouldn't consider institutions as bad or evil; their net utility depends on their extent. A small institution (such as the original G6 meeting) may be spectacularly efficient and useful, while the same same in a less modest shape may be a waste of time (such as the Byzantinian G20 bureaucrat orgies) or even outright ruinous (as the Euro currency).

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

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Graduated or continuous

The recent post on the operational level of warfare and plenty discussions and other communications of the past have told me more about the importance of how people look at the world.

I already wrote about the mosaic and gems thing; that a 80% crappy book can still be fine if it has 5% gems, while a 95% mediocre and only 5% crappy book without gems is utterly useless.
I'm not in much company with my emphasis on the few gems and disinterest in the average quality of books. I know people who dislike a long text because they disagree with some premise, completely ignoring what they could learn from other parts of it.

The difference between graduated and discreet is apparently another thing which divides people in their approach. Look at this graphic:

I can see purple, dark purple, blue, turquoise, green, yellow, orange, red and dark red.

I cannot quite tell where the delineations between them are, but I don't care. I've got some tolerance for this kind of fuzziness. There's no tolerance for fuzziness if once well-defined terms become fuzzy because of inflationary use, though. I won't accept the yellow as "red".

Does this tolerance for fuzziness matter? Well, yes, I think so.

It's nice to have great clarity thanks to order, definitions et cetera - but these normally useful mental tools become perverted if one insists on them in face of a problem which is inherently fuzzy.

 

Sometimes there is no "yes" or "no" answer, but only a "it depends", for example. Other times it's obvious that there are some different things, even if one cannot pin down the exact delineations.

Plenty people insist on "yes" or "no" - they insist on simplifying the world. It's being done a lot in professional training, for example. Courses with high graduation rates are especially prone to this. The greater the share of graduating students, the more you need to dumb the content down.

This is probably why some military forces are so fond of simplistic maxims. The business world also uses some simplistic models which are useful for pointing something out once, but are often taken much more seriously. It's fine to understand the idea of the Pareto principle, but to take the Pareto chart seriously in business is bullshit, for example.*

Simplistic approaches may be fine for practical employment most of the time, but they're merely blinding you for the finer points and exceptions if you insist on them in theory. Anyone striving for understanding difficult problems and many exceptions to the rules needs to drop the ambition that everything needs to fit into simplistic frameworks.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Stupid people will apply the chart and fail to account for its exceptions, while smart people don't need the chart anyway.

The worst models and methods in businesses are the ones developed by big brand consultants. These people develop these models to have something simple enough that top management may understand it in a presentation, but nebulous and confusing enough that said management falls for the pretence that it takes experienced consultants to apply the crap. These models were invented to acquire clients for consultants, not for good management.

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