Napoleon on torture

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“The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon to Berthier 11 Nov 1798, Corres., V, no. 3606 p. 128 quoted in – Napoleon on the Art of War

(source link)

Some people are lagging by 200 years on this topic...

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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An ASW concept for the future (2020's)

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This is about the 2020's.

Imagine a swimming pool that's filled with water, and on the water's surface are footballs. In fact, there are more footballs than needed to cover the entire area - several spare ones are sitting atop others. Now remove a ball from this picture - the others would be move by gravity and the gap would be filled.

Now replace this mental picture with the ocean - the balls are small ships, most of them at very, very low speed if not drifting. Some of those ships have a low frequency active sonar* emitter that make a lot of low frequency noise (the noise that apparently drives whales and thus Greenpeace mad). Their crews are on other ships a mile or two away, controlling this loud emitter ship from safe distance. That's advisable because being a loud emitter, every hostile submarine has the worst wishes for it. The controlling manned ship nearby on the other hand is irrelevant; remote control could just as well be by a satellite communication backup.

A different kind of ship emits no relevant noises at all, it's merely drifting. It's using an entirely passive sonar array that's meant to pick up the echoes of the noises made by the low frequency sonar emitters.

This is a multistatic sonar network with acceptable odds of crew survival. It can cover a huge area at affordable expenses. Any submarine could be detected except in areas where very tricky sea bottom shapes and tricky sonar phenomena make detection difficult. It wouldn't detect 100% of submarines quickly, but the probability of detection would be very high.  Hostile air power could sweep the sea clean of this, but my assumption for now is that this is not an area in range of hostile air power.

What to do with a suspected contact? It might be one of many false positives. This is the time for another kind of drone; they're floating and drifting on the surface as well, waiting for an order by radio. The two of them closest to a suspected contact get tasked to investigate. They intercept, use an imaging active sonar and return to surface to transmit the result by radio. The imaging sonar could show a hostile submarine type, or both investigation drones fail to report back in time - both would lead to the contact being considered an actual hostile submarine, since a friendly submarine would be discernible visually and it would decipher an identification code embedded in the imaging sonar's emissions and thus not destroy the investigator drones.

Finally, the area commander would want to engage a detected and confirmed hostile submarine. During the 1990's he would have dispatched maritime patrol aircraft or helicopters - particularly the latter ones might also have been employed for confirming the contact with a dipping sonar. But this is the 2020's, and hostile submarines are known to have submarine-to-air missiles. To protect helicopters and aircraft against those was much too expensive. Instead, the area commander would have a revival of an old concept at hand - ASW-SOW or "Sea Lance", a vertical launch rocket with impressive range and a lightweight anti-submarine torpedo as warhead. Development of such munitions was held back in favour of gold-plated helicopters back when submarine-to-air missiles weren't known to be common. These can be launched through satellite or other radio communication; their storage is in simple containers on some, but not all of the ships, mostly hidden from (periscope) sight.

A pattern of three such missiles is launched, impacting in a triangle formation around the contact and engaging it with a "no escape" intent. The optimization of the lightweight torpedo warheads and their formation attack pattern are the reason why no investigator drones have a secondary "kill" purpose; they would be ineffective by comparison and throw away a valuable imaging sonar.

The submarine's only chance of survival is now the employment of countermeasures, but the investigator drones are back in action (if they survived) and attempt to document any countermeasures employed in order to refine future attack methods.

The most fascinating thing: Not a single warship is needed to secure a shipping lane 100 nm wide and hundreds of nm long. The only hardware employed were small civilian ships turned into auxiliary warships and munitions / drones.

A convoy system isn't required either, since the security effort is proportional to the area (required length and required width), threat (engagement range submarine -> cargo ship) and ambition (density and desired width) - it's independent of the quantity of secured ships on that shipping lane (related link).

We're not going to see this in the 2020's by any of the major navies known today unless they lose much of their conventional forces as did the USN in 1941 Pearl Harbour, provoking its modernization into a carrier-centric force. The reason is the same; back in the 1930's the battleship and cruiser lobby wanted as many battleships and cruisers as possible, with many, many career opportunities for officers.

No established major navy would want to build itself into something that requires almost no fancy warship hulls with almost no jobs and career opportunities for officers, and certainly they cannot stand the idea of a navy ASW branch largely consisting of thousands of containers in dry storage, waiting to be used to create an auxiliary warship and drones ASW force in wartime.

P.S.: Everything described herein has been technically feasible since the mid-1990's at the latest.

*: "The array creates a dish shaped pattern of very loud, low frequency, variable broadband sound (235 dB (...) @ 100-1000 Hz) that reaches out roughly 100 miles. The towed array is deployed about 100 meters deep at three knots, pulsing on a 10% duty cycle. In recent experiments, Low-Frequency Active (LFA) system has detected submarines at long ranges." source

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Military personnel affairs realities

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From an old book (a footnote in "Gefechtsfeld Mitteleuropa", F. Uhle-Wettler), abbreviated translation follows:

1978 befahl einer unserer höchsten Vorgesetzten, ihm das Personal einer typischen Kompanie sichtbar vorzustellen (Berufssoldaten, Zeitsoldaten, Wehrpflichtige, heimatfern Einberufene usw.). Hierzu wurde an einem willkürlich gewählten Stichtag bei allen Panzerkompanien einer Panzerbrigade der Unterschied zwischen der Papier- und der tatsächlichen Ausbildungsstärke festgestellt. Im Durchschnitt der Kompanien hatten am Stichtag weit mehr als 30 Soldaten bei der Ausbilung gefehlt. Bei der dem Vorgesetzten als typisch vorgestellten Kompanie fehlten: 4 Soldaten Fahrschule, 3 Soldaten Wache, 3 Soldaten durch Arzt vom Außendienst befreit, 2 Soldaten neukrank, 2 Soldaten Resturlaub vor der Entlassung, 2 Soldaten Unteroffizier-Grundlehrgang, 2 Soldaten UvD/GvD, 2 Unteroffiziere Ausbildung bei der Unteroffizier-Vorausbildung, 2 Unteroffiziere Urlaub und schließlich je ein Soldat Offizierslehrgang B, Teilnehmer Unteroffizier-Vorausbildung, Teilnehmer Unteroffizier-Aufbaulehrgang, Teilnehmer Informationstagung für Unteroffiziere, Fahrlehrer in der Bataillons-Fahrschule, abkommandiert zum Nachholen einer ATN, wegen Unfallverletzung zur 1. Kompanie kommandiert, zu Hause auf Entlassung aus gesundheitlichen Gründen wartend und schließlich noch ein Soldat in Untersuchungshaft. Am Schluß der Vorführung befahl der Kompaniechef denjenigen Soldaten, die am Stichtag zur Ausbildung zur Verfügung gewesen waren, an die Panzer wegzutreten. Es ergab sich ein sehr unschönes Bild, denn keiner der Panzer hatte eine komplette Besatzung. Dabei ist in den Panzerkompanien die Lage noch verhältnismäßig günstig, da die Panzerkompanie zwei Besatzungen mehr als Panzer hat (...).

my (quick) translation:

One of our highest superiors ordered in 1978 to show him the personnel of a typical company (professional soldiers, volunteers, conscripts (...)). To this end the difference between nominal and actual strength of all tank companies of a armoured brigade were determined. On average much more than 30 soldiers were unavailable per company on this day. At the company shown as representative example were missing: 4 soldiers driving school, 3 soldiers barracks guards, 3 soldiers declared unfit by a doctor, 2 soldiers fell ill that day, 2 soldiers on vacation before end of service, 2 soldiers non-commissioned officer basic course, 2 soldiers presence guards of the company, 2 non-commissioned officers were trainers at the NCO pre-basic course, 2 non-commissioned officers on vacation and finally each one soldier [9 more with individual reasons]. At the end of the presentation the company leader ordered the available soldiers for <> to the tanks. The result was a very unpretty sight, since no tank had a full crew. The situation in the tank companies was relatively favourable, because a tank company has two crews more than tanks (...).

This was from an early 80's book and describes an army that had to maintain a high average level of readiness at all times because the greatest military threat force ever was sitting a few road march hours away, across the iron curtain. The 80's are to today's Heer a near-mythical "old times" period when everybody was serious about deterrence and defence, competence in basics and leadership was high and enough good equipment was available.

Personnel affairs are different today (the Bundeswehr moved many training tasks from field brigades to the Streitkräftebasis), but on the other hand the perceived demand for a high readiness is lower. The reality is not fancy in any bureaucracy, and armed services are no exception to this rule. Personnel affairs are messy, and nominal TO&Es are theory only.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Flottenverein

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Some people just love all things naval. The uniforms, the ships, the navy in general. They just love the idea of a navy, the fantasy about the navy in their brain - even insiders who actually worked in a navy and experienced the dull bureaucracy that all established armed forces have become - they just love the navy.

It's a grave mistake to think of navy officers or veterans as experts in naval affairs. First one should check whether they are infected with this irrational love or not. The bias of navy fans is incredible and perfectly immune to arguments or reality in general. Psychologists revealed in experiments that people with a strong opinion will feel this opinion even stronger and become more agitated in its defence when faced with contradicting evidence. The psychological research about this phenomenon was done in the 70's or earlier, but still didn't improve our society because "rational" is not the way people make decisions.

More about the navy fans; I suppose many readers know about the German Flottenverein, a lobby organization with an astonishing quantity of members which pushed for an impressive battlefleet prior to the First World War. This endeavour leached resources away from the land power of Germany, quite likely causing the first World War to grow this long, this horrible - and to end with German instead of French defeat.

There was a second Flottenverein, though. Now considering that there were and are only three German-speaking countries and Switzerland lacking any coastline, this could only have been an Austrian thing. Austria-Hungary had a coastline before 1918.

Now keep in mind the naval mine was developed into a practical munition by 1900, the torpedo was developed into a practical munition by 1900, Italy had hardly any important harbours on the Adriatic coast, Italy was kinda allied to Austria-Hungary prior to 1915 (the map shows the political allegiances of 1916) Austria-Hungary had no colonies, no intent to conquer any ... the case for even a small navy was infinitesimally small. Any money spent on an Austrian-Hungarian navy would be better spent on its army.

Nevertheless, Austria had its own navy fan(atics). They had their own Flottenverein, the Österreichischer Flottenverein. It lobbied for a battlefleet, and a (tiny) battlefleet it got.

Austro-Hungarian fleet exercise fo 1913 - from an old postcard

I kid you not; the stupid is so strong, Austria - while lacking any coastline after 1919 - had successor organizations of this lobby organization founded after both world wars.

The navy of Austria Hungary is summarized at naval-history.net:

Apart from one major fleet sortie on the declaration of war between Austria and Italy on the 23rd May 1915, and an aborted one in June 1918 when dreadnought 'Szent Istvan' was lost, the Austrian heavy ships spent the entire war as a fleet-in-being within the Adriatic Sea, holding down a large portion of the Italian and French battle fleets as well as units of the Royal Navy. Most of the action in the Adriatic that took place involved the well-handled destroyers, submarines and to a lesser extent light cruisers of the Austrian Navy.

The page goes on to list the 'impressive' record of achievements - eight warships sunk for 17 lost.

Meanwhile, the Austrian army badly lacked machineguns, field howitzers, ammunition and an industrial base to properly sustain itself during wartime. Their navy was useless to them during the First World War - their army and what little industry supported it was all-important - and succumbed due to lack of resources (and cohesion), killing the state it was meant to defend in the process.

I kid you not on this either: Bolivia has been landlocked for generations, but it nevertheless maintains a "navy":

That's how strong the stupid is, how strong the fascination with a navy can be - and is in many places. 

Germany has never been better off with a navy in war than it would have been without it  - but this didn't stop us from recreating one in both Germanys during the Cold War. Neither had any chance of being a cost-efficient deterrent or an at least remotely decisive force in WW3. The surface combat units of the Cold War were all crap save for the F122 Bremen class of ASW frigates, which may or may not have been useful in their niche. The oversized mine countermeasures fleet of West Germany had no sensible mission at all - nobody would have been stupid enough to ship supplies or reinforcements directly into German harbours during a WW3, and we did expressly not want to suggest to Moscow that we planned for invading Eastern Europe.

Yet actual utility or not - navy fans just know that the navy is all-important, and they all have one thing in common: They want more ships, shinier ships. Nice toys.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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German field howitzer firing in Syria

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The use of German WW2 tanks during the Yom Kippur War was weird. I'm at loss of words about this video.

(2nd video)

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Tempo and losses

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I read books for their gems - small bits of most interesting info or thoughts - not for the whole work. A book from an unknown author with many mistakes and boring style can still be fine to me if it has four or five gems in it that add missing mosaic pieces to my knowledge.

I'd like to show you one such gem, it's from the book "Air Power and Maneuver Warfare" (which didn't have many mistakes and wasn't very boring):

Tempo sharply reduces casualties and logistic demands. This is the logical result of maneuver impacting the enemy before he can react coherently. The Soviets in their detailed postbattle studies (table 1) made elaborate correlations demonstrating this phenomenon. Their data show that, in addition to reduced demands for ammunition and fuel, fast-breaking advances of 20-50 kilometers a day resulted in three times less personnel losses and 1.5 times less tank losses than when the tempo of advances was 4-10 kilometers per day.

The OODA-esque interpretation is too simple (slow advances were often simply advances which faced a more powerful defence and no amount of elaboration in statistic analysis can cancel this factor out).

Still, the correlations between losses and apeed of advance as well as between operational success and speed of advance are strong. You should want to move quickly in land warfare for greater success and lower costs. The challenge is of course how to do this right, and this goes back even to training, hardware characteristics design priorities and organization.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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"How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election"

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"How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election"

Politico

I doubt it, but the wider topic is worthy of attention.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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[Fun] Pro & Contra Iran deal

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The return of conventional warfare (II)

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Yesterday I looked at the superficial, easy things about the current re-orientation. Today is the time for the 'backoffice' and non-hardware activities. Sadly, I'm not nearly as confident that these changes will actually happen.

* more combined arms training

* more deployment training

* "rapid deployment" may equate "administrative marches by road and rail" again, not by "airlift"

* pre-positioning of artillery ammunition stocks and a few brigade sets in Eastern Europe

* infantry training looking at assault/raid and ambush/delaying actions much more, less at counter-IED, counter-sniper

* more training in woodland

* some more winter training, more rarely combined with 'alpine' training

* more training in radio emissions-restricted mode, less emphasis on items such as blue force tracker

* less dependency on satellite navigation

* new approaches to AFV identification friend or foe; both radio-based approaches and markings in the infrared spectrum won't do the trick any more

* renewed attempts to accelerate headquarter decisionmaking processes and to shorten orders

* more air combat training

* changed civ-mil training; expecting motorized civilian refugees to produce traffic jams, less interest in civilians as intel sources or as potential insurgents

* efforts to streamline political decisionmaking processes, to be imprinted in the foreign policy bureaucracies (because the political masters aren't there to stay as much as are bureaucrats)

One thing that I totally do not expect are any preparations for taking hostages bargaining chips in case of some crisis. NATO could keep Moscow's pet projects in Abchasia and South Ossetia hostage, or even occupy Kaliningrad Oblast in the event of violent Baltic border violations. I suppose this would both be too politically incorrect for a consensus among so many (notional) democracies.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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The return of conventional warfare

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The Ukraine crisis has shifted the focus back from occupation-style warfare to conventional warfare, even though "hybrid" is still a fashionable buzzword due to the initial "We are not Russians, look - we removed our patches!" approach of invading and annexing the Crimea.

One of the most obvious comebacks was the one of main battle tanks; Germany pulls some out of storage, for example. A couple years ago the intent was rather to add infantry battalions for more boots on the ground (outside of the camp) during occupation warfare.

Other comebacks may be about

  

* (long-range, shoot and scoot-capable) artillery (with cheap dumb or simple trajectory correction munitions), which appears to dominate combat in the Eastern Ukraine

 

* electronic warfare, which the Russians appear to use well in the Ukraine

 

* rapidity, since the Russians are not forgiving deliberation and loitering as well as the Taliban do

 

* anti-tank munitions, since no matter how much Javelin and (Euro)Spike are being hyped-up, the AT munition issue is unsatisfactory

 
* classic minefield breaching; real (scatterable) AT mines instead of "IEDs", "breach this shallow minefield under fire now!" instead of "we clear this 100 km road in a two-week operation"
 

* mobile logistics instead of adding comfort to huge walled bases

 

* air combat and (Western) air defences

 

* SEAD/DEAD (suppression/destruction of enemy air defences) and aircraft self-protection against SA-10, SA-12, SA-17, SA-19, SA-20, SA-21. SA-22, SA-23, SA-24, "Morfey", 50R6 Vityaz

 

* battlefied EMP and laser threat concerns

 

* how to wage air war past support range of pushed-back (by long-range SAM and fighters) large radar support planes (AWACS, Erieye, J-STARS, ASTOR) where aircraft need to use their own radar much to avoid blindness (no in-service fighters were designed for organic 360° radar coverage)

* concerns about very accurate cruise missiles and (quasi-)ballistic missiles
 

* bunker-busting

 

* a return of emphasis on infantry protection against fragmentation instead of against bullets may happen

I dislike the fetish about bunker-busting and ballistic missile defence; there are so few bunkers able to withstand ordinary bombs that I began to suspect "bunker-busting" really is about entering and blowing up from inside the massive reinforced concrete legs of large bridges. "BMD" looked a lot like a racket to shove more money to missile- and radar-makers while there was no impressive combat aviation threat as a suitable justification. Ballistic missiles can be employed in saturation attacks that overwhelm any kind of BMD. BMD against manoeuvering (guided) ballistic missiles is ridiculously challenging anyway.

I've always emphasised real deterrence and defence over occupation warfare and many of these suspected comebacks are about topics I covered in articles years ago already. 

It is this wealth of old-and-still-applicable articles and the poor access to good information about warfare in the Ukraine that keeps me from writing much more about the currently en vogue military topics.

This list may thus be biased in favour of my pet topics instead of a rational assessment of what will gain prominence. Furthermore, I remember my prediction of fashions was very faulty about 15 years ago, when I was sure thermobaric munitions and flechettes would become big. Instead, white phosphorous shells and Kalashnikovs caught the attention of journalists and activists who attempted to abolish war by discrediting and banning one tool of warfare after another. Maybe my prediction isn't more accurate now either.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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