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Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies

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Re: Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies

#31

Post by enzino »

s5300 wrote: post #18
remarkEon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What. The US spent 20 years fighting goat herders with AK-47s, and lost. The CCCP did the same and also lost, albeit they left actually left when they realized is was a mess (with a little help from CIA, sure). There are other obvious examples. Economic might is a major determinant in how well you can prosecute a war but it is by no means the only thing that matters.

Mujahideen that turned into Taliban were literally trained by the CIA. Calling them goat herders is either ignorance, racism, or pushing whatever agenda you're trying to push. Unless you're specifically speaking of the lowest caliber grunts of their infantry, in which theirs are nearly the same as ours. Mostly uneducated cannon fodder. But yes, the US completely intentionally drew out the 20 years of war to put money…

One could think of rural hipsters with goats in america. I think characterizing Afghans as poor fighters was part of the propaganda push. "They're so weak, no way we'll lose." Turns out those goat herders have successfully expelled invaders since recorded history.

Re: Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies

#32

Post by doomjunky »

rogereur wrote: post #12

I think wars in the future will be about who's better at computer science. It will be programmers vs programmers, and computer literacy will become the new military service and a national security interest

I was astonished about the rapid expansion of the list of cyber warfare forces in recent years and by the incredible mass of cyber warfare capabilities of the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyber_warfare_forces

Re: Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies

#33

Post by s5300 »

User23 wrote: post #26
s5300 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mujahideen that turned into Taliban were literally trained by the CIA. Calling them goat herders is either ignorance, racism, or pushing whatever agenda you're trying to push. Unless you're specifically speaking of the lowest caliber grunts of their infantry, in which theirs are nearly the same as ours. Mostly uneducated cannon fodder. But yes, the US completely intentionally drew out the 20 years of war to put money…

The US “cannon fodder” comes from the most advanced civilian gun culture in the world. To this day the US federal government actively supports civilian marksmanship. It was entertaining seeing how the CIA taught the 2021 Taliban proper trigger discipline compared to the fingers resting on the trigger of a machine gun photos of the early 2000s. Shades of Kipling there.

Do you know what the Army Commendation medal is? To my knowledge, it's mostly something that is given after your first deployment/duty, fairly common but you have to have done something meaningful.

A friend of mine got his commendation medal in what I believe was Basic training (and this was just national guard), or training slightly after basic. This, from his understanding at the time, was fairly uncommon/unheard of.

Why he received the medal? He was the singular person in his platoon/training regiment that shot a perfect score/sheet in their rifle marksman class. For some reason, very few others came even close to perfect, most more towards the (lol) average of what was required, or worse than that.

He got a lot of questions from his peers as to what he was doing differently to have so seemingly easily scored perfectly. He said he wasn't really sure... asked "did you zero your rifles?"

By his account, he was quite literally the singular person, of a group of people all having military training and fucking around with firearms and live ammunition, that read the actual manual, instructions, and properly zeroed his rifle.

So, while you may perceive "comes from the most advanced civilian gun culture in the world" to be true, I somewhat disagree on its merits and propose that if the Taliban infantry are indeed goat herders, they may have more hands on experience in properly using firearms, as animal husbandry in areas like Afghanistan has some livestock preditors they must be wary about. That and the whole growing up in a completely unstable place constantly in some form of war/conflict.

I have however heard reports from the tales of General Butt Naked & Co, that down in West Africa and such, that the child soldiers know nothing other than the idea of "big number equal good"

And so, they set the windage sights on their AK's to the highest number, and end up shooting completely over the heads of people 20 feet from them. Perhaps these are the types you're thinking of when you say Afghani goat herder? No, you may be thinking of African child soldiers.

Re: Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies

#34

Post by [deleted] »

pasabagi wrote: post #22
wolverine876 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It serves another purpose: Deterring potential enemies and giving confidence to allies. For example, the US has contributed to international peace East Asia for generations in part by having underlying muscle available. And today, if the US military tech was removed, I have a hard time imagining that alliances with Japan, S Korea, and others, not to mention Taiwan's freedom, would survive.

Wait, what? Did you miss the bit where they bombed North Korea until they had killed about one fifth of the population, and destroyed basically every form of standing shelter? Or the war in Vietnam? Or the support for South Korean dictators, even as they murdered their own people? If that's a contribution to international peace, I hate to imagine what you'd think was a contribution to regional instability. Even on a…

[deleted]

Re: Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies

#35

Post by enzino »

s5300 wrote: post #33
User23 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US “cannon fodder” comes from the most advanced civilian gun culture in the world. To this day the US federal government actively supports civilian marksmanship. It was entertaining seeing how the CIA taught the 2021 Taliban proper trigger discipline compared to the fingers resting on the trigger of a machine gun photos of the early 2000s. Shades of Kipling there.

Do you know what the Army Commendation medal is? To my knowledge, it's mostly something that is given after your first deployment/duty, fairly common but you have to have done something meaningful. A friend of mine got his commendation medal in what I believe was Basic training (and this was just national guard), or training slightly after basic. This, from his understanding at the time, was fairly uncommon/unheard o…

It's sad to hear that the neo-marxist lowering of educational standards is also happening in the military. Our faith rests with the self-regulated militia.

Re: Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies

#36

Post by s5300 »

enzino wrote: post #35
s5300 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what the Army Commendation medal is? To my knowledge, it's mostly something that is given after your first deployment/duty, fairly common but you have to have done something meaningful. A friend of mine got his commendation medal in what I believe was Basic training (and this was just national guard), or training slightly after basic. This, from his understanding at the time, was fairly uncommon/unheard o…

It's sad to hear that the neo-marxist lowering of educational standards is also happening in the military. Our faith rests with the self-regulated militia.

I don't know what self-regulated militia you speak of, but I hope they have a way to survive MIRV's & a supply chain that isn't reliant on fast food and Wal-Mart, because any domestic group that can't will likely be stopped the second our government feels like stopping them.

Re: Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies

#37

Post by throwaway210222 »

s5300 wrote: post #18
remarkEon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What. The US spent 20 years fighting goat herders with AK-47s, and lost. The CCCP did the same and also lost, albeit they left actually left when they realized is was a mess (with a little help from CIA, sure). There are other obvious examples. Economic might is a major determinant in how well you can prosecute a war but it is by no means the only thing that matters.

Mujahideen that turned into Taliban were literally trained by the CIA. Calling them goat herders is either ignorance, racism, or pushing whatever agenda you're trying to push. Unless you're specifically speaking of the lowest caliber grunts of their infantry, in which theirs are nearly the same as ours. Mostly uneducated cannon fodder. But yes, the US completely intentionally drew out the 20 years of war to put money…

> The Taliban tried to surrender 2-3 months after we first attacked them IIRC, and we said no.

The problem with fighting people who may have wronged you but have not seized any of your territories, yet whose values and principles are far from your own is that you can only accept unconditional surrender.

Otherwise, why fight.

Re: Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies

#38

Post by enzino »

s5300 wrote: post #36
enzino wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad to hear that the neo-marxist lowering of educational standards is also happening in the military. Our faith rests with the self-regulated militia.

I don't know what self-regulated militia you speak of, but I hope they have a way to survive MIRV's & a supply chain that isn't reliant on fast food and Wal-Mart, because any domestic group that can't will likely be stopped the second our government feels like stopping them.

That was just a word play on the 2nd amendment. They couldn't stop the Afghans with GSM-targeted drone-delivered missiles though :)

Re: Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies

#39

Post by nradov »

wolverine876 wrote: post #16

> Here we analyze the evolution of key military technologies in a sample of pre-industrial societies world-wide covering almost 10,000 years of history using Seshat: Global History Databank. Does anyone here know about that Seshat Databank? It looks fascinating, and I ran into it someplace else too. What is its scope? Who actually uses it and for what?

You can just read their own description.

http://seshatdatabank.info/seshat-about-us/

Re: Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies

#40

Post by wikidani »

remarkEon wrote: post #13
bpodgursky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if 90% of military tech is fake (and I think "fake" more usually means "we think it works, but turns out it doesn't"), the other 10% can completely tip the scales in a war, to disastrous effect (to the loser). History has a lot of examples of technology which seemed preposterous until it completely turned the tides of battles or wars (radar, tanks, mustard gas, atomic bombs...) Drone warfare is pretty clearly in…

Yeah, I’ve been waiting for a full reading of last year’s Armenian/Azerbaijani conflict but haven’t seen anything that runs down the full event. Any links? Thus far I’ve found some YouTube or other video clips. Looking for a more technical exploration of how that tech was used.

I believe there's a fairly comprehensive report on the Bayraktar TB2 and its use on this blog [oryxspioenkop.com]. You might want to check out popular front on instagram as well
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