The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Iran and the Bomb

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The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Iran and the Bomb, 

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Facts

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Combined Arms

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Combined arms is a military theory thing that resembles rock-scissor-paper a bit: One part of the mix trumps when the others don't succeed. Some advanced theorizing about combined arms talks of dislocating enemy strengths, while more doctrine-oriented theorizing raises combined arms to a golden rule for force composition. Combined arms doesn't always have the same meaning, though. 

Combined arms on an ancient battlefield would mean heavy infantry, missile troops (bowmen, slingers, javelineers) and cavalry (substituted for by light infantry in horses-poor regions). 

Combined arms on a European 17th century battlefield would mean pikemen, musketeers, cavalry and artillery.

Combined arms on a European 18th century battlefield was no doubt infantry, artillery and cavalry (the bayonet had joined musketeers with pikemen).

Combined arms in a WW2 sea battle could be escorts (DD/DE/CLAA), armoured gunfighter ships (BB/BC/CA/CL) and aircraft carriers (CV/CVL/CVE/CVS). 

Combined arms in a modern air force strike package could be fighters, bombers, SEAD (suppression of enemy air defences) specialist aircraft and stand-off jammer (radio and radar) aircraft. 

Combined arms on a modern battlefield would usually be defined as armour, infantry and artillery (including mortars for this purpose).

This is where I tend to disagree. The list already shows that technological development may change the meaning of combined arms; the meaning is not carved in stone.

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It is rather likely that combat engineers should be recognised as a worthy component of combined arms; they are a supporting branch, but they do what combine arms is about: Be the ace in the hole that leads to success when the other branches don't succeed.

Another component that deserves attention -especially at these times- is battlefield air defence, possibly in union with C-RAM (counter rocket artillery mortar (munitions)). Battlefield air defences are necessary in face of aerial drones, but too many people still think that we need little or no battlefield air defences because of our oh-so great fighter fleets.

Modern warfare is very sophisticated and it shouldn't surprise that modern combined arms should have more components than the ancient one.

Here's yet another component; electronic warfare. This comes almost straight out of university physics departments. The physics behind electromagnetic stuff are really tricky, and EW is mostly about exactly this stuff.

Back during the 17th century a line of pikemen in front of the musketeers usually broke up a cavalry charge without actual fighting - a charge into an orderly line of pikes was stupid. Nowadays the well-timed and correct application of a radio jammer could break up a tank company attacking movement because tanks without radio comm would be at a severe disadvantage (example).

Finally I would claim that reconnaissance and observer troops deserve a place of their own, but that's a long story.

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Armour

Infantry

Artillery

Combat engineers

Air defences

Electronic Warfare

Three of these are embodiments of military power. A matchup of army forces for public information would count personnel (kind of representing infantry), main battle tanks (or AFVs in general) and artillery pieces (usually ignoring mortars). Some such inter-military matchups also add air power elements such as combat aircraft and battlefield helicopters.

The others - combat engineers, air defences, electronic warfare - don't appear in such matchups, and that's symptomatic of how they get a lot less attention. This doesn't hurt much unless the budget gets rigged for style over substance (overemphasising armour, infantry and artillery) or unless doctrine neglects some combined arms elements. There's usually a field manual for everything, so total doctrinal neglect is unlikely, but one might still be concerned over infantry battalion field manuals paying no or almost no attention to the cooperation with electronic warfare troops or combat engineers, for example.

I have to admit I didn't find a single military theory work so far that lays out the dynamics between all six combined arms elements (or even recognises the seventh) properly. In fact, a written theoretical work on combined arms is often stuck at the level of explaining the three obvious elements and their dynamics. 

It appears as if there's a lot of room for improvement in military theory left in regard to combined arms theory.

Too bad; it's overshadowed by small wars with their military intelligence and civ-mil relations emphasis and also overshadowed by the after-effects of RMA (revolution of military affairs; buzzword for a huge confidence in electronic equipment).

SO

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Early Italian paratroopers

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Look at this photo; it shows Italian paratroopers of the early times of paratroops. 

Something isn't right.

Perhaps more obviously, this photo shows WHAT isn't right:

Yes, face first. Landing on all fours.

With some pads on elbows and knees.

Somehow this technique of parachuting (supposedly meant to enable the paratrooper to use his personal weapon during the descent) didn't quite make it into mainstream, not even in Italy. 

It was too dumb, even more dumb than the contemporary German idea of letting paras jump separately from all weapons bigger than a pistol (kind of the exact opposite of the Italian technique documented above).

I wrote this in part to entertain you, in part to remind you that new and shiny stuff usually has teething problems. I've encountered lots of people and articles who believed a bit too much in the promises of something *new* (or something that actually returns once per generation as *new*).

No, it was really just for laughs! ;)

S Ortmann
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Minority rights in a democracy

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A democracy consists of two fundamental principles: 

(1) The majority rules.

(2) The minority enjoys protective rights.

This blog came into contact with the latter issues - minority rights - twice lately. 

One time someone demonstrated in comments that he misunderstood the freedom of speech as a privilege to publish one's opinion against the will of the publisher. That was nonsense, of course.

Freedom of speech is a protection against sanctions for speech. He cannot be punished for speaking out (unless he crossed certain limits, such as libel). He may find a publisher who publishes his opinion or he may become his own publisher. His freedom of speech does not entitle him to get his opinion published in the publication of his choice against the will of the publisher.

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The other example was about the idea that religious freedom might entitle people to mutilate others. This was nonsense as well, of course.

Minority rights in a democracy are protection rights. They do not privilege the minority to do something that's still illegal to do for the majority.
An ethnic minority (say, a hypothetical tribesman from Africa who wants his newborn son scarred) or a religious minority are not entitled to mutilate others while the majority is not entitled to it. Their minority right is that the state must not outlaw the songs of a specific ethnic and it must not outlaw the mass of a specific religion, for example.

THESE are minority protection rights as they belong to every true democracy.

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Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities 

Adopted by General Assembly resolution 47/135 of 18 December 1992, Article 8:
 

2. The exercise of the rights set forth in the present Declaration shall not prejudice the enjoyment by all persons of universally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms.

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Constitutional ("Basic Law") situation in Germany as it concerns what was mentioned above:
 
Article 1 includes the protection of dignity of humans
Article 2 includes the right to physical integrity
Article 3 includes Equality before the law
Article 6 includes the duty of parents to care for their children and the state's duty to watch over this.
Article 14 includes a (interestingly conditional) guarantee for property

(All first 20 articles of the Basic Law have a special, most powerful status.)

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Minority rights are protections against oppression, not privileges to infringe on other's rights (such as property, health etc).

S Ortmann

related: Democracy Web(site) .
 

What again do we need helos for? ;)

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A cub with tundra tires landing in a space no larger than a parking spot and then takes off after a short roll.

(There are lots of such bush and competition aircraft as well as videos about them.)

Related:

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A new Kulturkampf

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I sense the possibility of an unintended new Kulturkampf in Germany; this time it's definitively not driven by the government. The Kulturkampf was a political conflict of the 1870s especially in Prussia, which established a secular state once and for all, established the separation of church and state and broke many clerical privileges such as the definition of who's married and who's not. 

The horrible English Wikipedia article on Kulturkampf suggests strongly that it was a huge discrimination and prosecution campaign against the Catholic Church, while the German Wikipedia article on Kulturkampf is seemingly about an entirely different series on events (and quite in agreement with what you can read in most German history books about the period).

Kulturkampf: A contemporary caricature

For example, the German wikipedia article mentions how actually the Catholic Church in person of its pope attacked freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. An early supposed discriminations was a law that forbade to incite violence and unrest with sermons. 

Well, in the end the Catholic Church lost (Prussia was predominantly Protestant anyway) and the result was that both the Catholic and Protestant church (each one in German; we don't have thousands of church organisations) agreed on deals with the state which did indeed include some privileges. Religious teaching in schools and the ability to piggyback contributions to the church on the income tax are among these. Rather little changed since. 

This may have come to an end. To date, there are two issues that question the relationship of church/spirituality and state:

(1) Religiously-motivated mutilations of children

Many citizens, especially certain lawyers, medical doctors and certain judges, have run out of patience with the excuse that mutilation of newborns shall be legal because of a religious necessity. This affects primarily circumcision, but it could and appears to creep forward towards questioning the legality of socially accepted piercings (for an earring) in regard to under-16 children. It's certainly unnecessary to detail how the pro-mutilation people reacted.

So far the conservatives appear to attempt to fix the issue by building the privilege to excuse newborn mutilation with religion into German criminal law. It appears this move may be too slow, for the government may face a popular majority against such a jurisdiction already.

Interestingly, the pseudo-Muslim mutilation of young girls in parts of Africa was never tolerated and occasionally damned in the German public. I guess few people who agitated as if we could change such customs in Africa expected us to turn against the forms of mutilation that were so far socially accepted in Europe.

(2) Blasphemy

Unknown to many Germans (until recently), there are indeed two law paragraphs against blasphemy in the German criminal code, and both appear to be questionable. One is directed against provocations that can disrupt the civil peace (§166 StGB), while the other (§167 StGB) is outlawing the disruption of a mass. 

Both appear to be almost entirely unused, and it has been noted that §166 is in practice not used to protect Christian faith from libel because Christians appear to be too relaxed for reacting in a way that constitutes a breach of civil peace. The paragraph is probably from a time when this was not expected. This 'relaxed' behaviour points out that it's not so much the provocation as rather any violent or otherwise illegal reaction that's the real problem - and accordingly, the so far faint demands for getting rid of §166 may gain some steam and succeed. It would certainly be a victory for free speech. 

§167 is very redundant because usually such events happen in a building and it's illegal to enter or stay in foreign property against the will of the owner or a representative thereof (§ 123 StGB). 

The Russian "Pussy Riot" group was sentenced to two years in prison (or rather a labour camp) for such a transgression and this was quite universally damned as out of proportion in Germany.

Guess what? Maximum sentence in §167 is three years in Germany. Maximum sentence in §123 is one year, and in its more stern cousin §124 StGB (meant against a mob entering a building) two years.

I suppose that §167 StGB is totally out of sync with modern Germany and will not stand public scrutiny if the press decides to finally pay some serious attention to it.

A deletion of §167 StGB because of redundancy would be a gain for civil liberties as well, at least for the simple reason that any restriction means a loss of freedom (and this one appears to be totally redundant).

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It appears that while Protestant and Catholic churches are long since at peace with German secularity (which doesn't keep them from having and voicing a political opinion on certain issues, of course), the relations with other faiths may change in this decade in favour of more liberties and less strange privileges.

On the other hand, there's a movement that pushes for a deal with moderate Muslims similar to the deals with the two big churches; help them finance themselves (which could in effect reduce foreign influence, especially from the Gulf region) and provide a public school and thus necessarily constitution-tolerant alternative to purely private religious teachings. The moderate Muslims in Germany don't appear to be able to get their act together and form some body that could actually sign such a deal, of course*.

Such topics are still in political backwater and bound to lose public attention within weeks, but they could resurface again and again and some legislative action about these issues is politically unavoidable in the long term. There's certainly some potential for improvement in regard to civil liberties here and it's nice to see that the society is indeed interested in progress and not satisfied to stick to the late 20th century forever.

S O

*: The handful of extremist Muslims in Germany (small groups of loudmouths and other idiots of the same category as neonazis, only even fewer) on the other hand can rather expect their organisations to be outlawed due to criminal and counter-constitutional activities.

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Propaganda and Debating Techniques

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I found this (old) website with a huge list of vividly described propaganda and debating techniques and think it's worth sharing. It's not by pure chance that some of the propaganda techniques are illustrated with examples from tyrants and warmongers.

(The author seemed to have a bigger feud with a certain organisation, though.)

S Ortmann

P.S.: Google / Blogger is forcing the stupid new interface on us bloggers now. Be patient if strange things happen, especially concerning format, disappearing posts etc.

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Military capability as an emotional need

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Long-time readers probably remember; I'm the kind of guy who looks at military actions, compares costs and benefits (if the latter are to be found at all) and usually concludes that it wasn't worth it.

I did this for about conflicts and arrived at the more general opinion that the military is for defence, period. Actual defence, such as "other military force shoots at us at the sea or in our or allied countries".

For years I tended to bring this attitude and the cost/benefit comparisons into discussions with others, and a pattern became all-too obvious:

Many people are simply not into this comparison of costs and benefits in regard to the military.

The mere idea to be able to bomb place x or have a sub cruising in y or be able to send a brigade into region z to do something - this idea has value to them in its own.

I concluded that people interested in military affairs are overwhelmingly wired for this kind of thinking, and while probably not representative and certainly not influential in very small countries or demilitarised countries such as Costa Rica, they are very relevant in the U.S., UK, France and possibly Australia and Canada.

They dominate the public discussion on national security affairs. Representatives with interest in military affairs tend to have such special emotional needs, and too many of them are warmongers.

These special emotional needs make it almost impossible to determine an optimal national security policy. We don't know the share of these special people with such special needs and we have little information about their valuation of the military capability itself (it seems to be incredibly high, for no money figures leave even the trace of an effect on them).

How could we supply them with military capability in order to satisfy their emotional needs? If we did, would this improve the overall national emotional well-being or would it be too detrimental for the people without such special needs?

Maybe it's possible to tell them to set up a special fund and pay for their desired military capability themselves, while the others only pay for actual defence? Kind of as if Germany had sent the bills for the construction and operation of the Imperial High Seas fleet to emperor and Flottenverein (a pro-Navy association that lobbied a lot; kind of a ~1900 NRA for warships), as they were the driving force behind building said (utterly useless and even extremely risky) high seas fleet.

What can psychologists tell us about these special needs people; are they cultural or genetic? If cultural, can they be healed? Does giving them what they need only grow the need further as with a drug addict and his drugs or can their special emotional need be satisfied for good?

How handle such people with special emotional needs a life in countries such as Luxembourg or Costa Rica? Do they own lots of private weapons and private camouflage clothes or do they suffer from medically recognised anxieties?

It's abundantly clear to me that cost/benefit reasoning cannot explain the drive towards military power alone. Some powerful emotional needs help to drive it, too. Many peace researchers have blamed war and arms race profiteers as well as Niiskanen's bureaucrat with his principal-agent issues for the apparently irrational emphasis on the military in many nations. These explanations don't suffice to explain what has become abundantly clear and documented in the internet age: Many people without such monetary stakes in military budgeting have value the military much higher than the non-psychological benefits can justify.

Arms races - especially arms races without a serious competitor in the race - are shaped in part by nothing more sophisticated than a child's rage attack when its parents didn't buy some ice cream.

S Ortmann

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Protracted Warfare

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Why protract a war? [...] The enemy is strong and we are weak, and the danger of subjugation is there. But [...] the enemy's advantage can be reduced and his shortcomings aggravated by our efforts. On the other hand, our advantages can be enhanced and our shortcomings remedied by our efforts. Hence, we can win final victory and avert subjugation, while the enemy will ultimately be defeated.

Mao-Tse-tung, "On Protracted War"

The essence of protracted warfare doctrine is not to prolong a war out of respect for some mythical oriental principle, but rather to prolong it in order to avoid defeat.

We can conclude, then, that generally, the stronger side in a war seeks to shorten the duration of the conflict, while the weaker side generally tries to lengthen it in order to increase opportunities for a favorable outcome. [...] The stronger side is more apt to seek a clear beginning and ending to a war as well. The stronger side, not necessarily always the aggressor, usually wants to limit the expenditure of means (including time) in the accomplishment of its ends. [...] as a result, we must be careful when we make assumptions about duration in war.

Robert R. Leonhard, "Fighting by Minutes"

Combine this with what I wrote about repertoires and you have a full explanation of why the stupid conflict in Afghanistan is in its eleventh year already.

The best way out of such a conflict with such a protracting opponent is modesty in demands and a negotiated end to the conflict.

The second best way is to simply go home - if you can.

The third best way is to fool the enemy about the relative strength, provoke him into entering the last  stage of conflict and dare a general offensive. This is applicable to Afghanistan as well, but apparently way too much strategy for our dumb alliance.

S Ortmann
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Heavy and medium tank design philosophies

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I was engaged in a discussion at Think Defence, and want to salvage at least one part of the effort for my own blog:

SO define a modern heavy tank and a modern medium tank then?

A modern heavy tank was designed* with the ability to withstand all hits on its frontal (at least turret) armour and with the ability to penetrate all hostile front armour in mind. Mobility was a secondary development concern.

A modern medium tank was designed* with the ability to defeat all tanks and the ability to withstand almost all** hits on its frontal (at least turret) armour in mind. Substantial sacrifices were made to enhance mobility***.

*: Not necessarily with lasting success or even mere initial success.

**: Including common, but not the most powerful AT munitions.

***: This is rather about soft soil performance and choice of bridges than top speed.

These (unofficial) definitions show why I think mediums aren't at a major disadvantage: The heavies lose their edge to technological progress quickly, while the medium's advantages are more persistent.

S Ortmann

edit: These two definitions are concise descriptions of what I observed how others separate the two tank categories. Well, save for those people who only look at weight. I did not make this up by myself.

related: TK-X video (about the new Type 10 medium tank)

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