361–370 of 490 posts
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What if the drone were so inexpensive and portable that you could consider it like you do ammunition? Then the flight time and payload is much less critical - it's just a pilot-able bomb.
What if we just donated that money to all these hostile countries' citizens, and told them we'd stop the donations if they piss us off? Instead of dreaming of turning the future warzone from Terminator 2 into a reality?
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I hypothesize that the Taliban had it right all along. 4x4 Toyota Hilux trucks with some sort of heavy gun + a fireteam of infantry kitted out with 1x drone, 1x manpad, 1x atgm. Far cheaper than a modern tank and far more mobile. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War
Taliban technicals were failures when engaging NATO forces with air support. Larger tactical aircraft can remain at medium altitude (out of MANPAD range) and smash anything that moves with precision munitions.
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> What does a vulnerable tank do that self-propelled artillery doesn't do better? Being able to directly support infantry and their IFV/APC on the frontline?
I think the claim is that SPG can also fire in direct mode and they have MUCH bigger guns. Imagine an SPG with trophy system bolted on it. Question is, is passive armour beyond stopping bullets and shrapnel worth it? I wonder if the new "tank" will be a wheeled SPG that can fire hull down and has an APS system. Or it could be something like BTR 4 with its auto cannon, being able to carry some infantry, add APS to tha…
Well they can carry their own Stugna or Javelin. Isn't that an argument for more dismounted infantry, not less?
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And now advanced self-targeting hypersonic intercontinental ballistic missiles are going to soon usurp carriers. Just a few dozen launched from land will easily overwhelm any defense a carrier has. You know how everything in our lives is slowly becoming smart? This goes for all the weapons too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ship_ballistic_missile
Surprisingly enough, the AEGIS Anti Ballistic Missile variant is in fact designed to intercept the name on the tin. That a handful of lazy journalists write "carriers are dead" articles with some regularity doesn't mean the actual Pentagon is clueless and asleep at the wheel vs it being a superficial take of a much more complex topic. A couple years back the Navy asked congress for funding to demonstrate taking down…
When people say "hypersonic missiles" they mean missiles with a hypersonic glide phase, which have non-ballistic flight paths and can't generally be intercepted by anti-ballistic-missile countermeasures.
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> That's a really charitable description. No, it's just accurate to what's in the report. > The entire premise of the AVF at the time was that it would work fine, if you could still do a draft if you needed to. No, it wasn't. While the standby draft was in the report as a safeguard to slightly reduce the the from-0 spinup time of a draft, the argument presented is not “an AVF is non-harmful as long as backstopped by…
Again. I'm not contesting that these arguments exist and were in the report from back in 1968 . (I'm going to ignore for a second that we don't actually do anything to rehearse a draft, standby or not, so yes we actually would have to build everything from scratch again.) I'm stating that there is no way the political direction from the White House to end the draft didn't influence what ended up happening, who got to…
The military doesn't even want conscripts anymore. They have discipline problems, take too long to train, and don't stay long enough. Conscription stopped being relevant when technology became more important than numbers.
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Never say never, but you really don't want that to happen.
I didn't say anything about wanting it to happen. But if it happens, does anyone seriously believe that US could avoid re-instituting the draft?
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> My point is that we should all be fighting against war. By what, asking nicely?
Yes. Be very persuasive. But restrict yourself to persuasion. The way is for the antiwar people to be more successful than warriors and turn war into the losers' choice. I refuse to arm myself, refuse to serve in militaries and refuse to support war as much as i am able. If antiwar people are successful, war will evolve out.
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The Talibans are the Afghanistan, or a bit part of it.
"Afghanistan" is a western colonial construct made up of many groups. Most states are western colonial constructs. We might need to move past that.
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Taliban technicals were failures when engaging NATO forces with air support. Larger tactical aircraft can remain at medium altitude (out of MANPAD range) and smash anything that moves with precision munitions.
What does a tank do better than a technical in that situation? AFAIK they don't generally carry better-than-MANPAD AA, they're not heavily armoured enough to resist precision munitions, and they're vastly more expensive.
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What does a tank do better than a technical in that situation? AFAIK they don't generally carry better-than-MANPAD AA, they're not heavily armoured enough to resist precision munitions, and they're vastly more expensive.
Which is why tanks don't operate independently. They need air support, plus mobile medium range air defense systems.