391–400 of 490 posts
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You seem to have missed the "investment into peace research and conflict prevention" part of my post. Ironically, that's the part that you quoted.
Thousands of years of peace research have shown that some conflicts can only be prevented by the peaceful side being better prepared for war.
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Yup. The key point is, a weapon system becomes obsolete when something else does its job better, not when it becomes more vulnerable. When something valuable becomes more vulnerable, you protect it better. When it becomes less valuable because something else does the job better, then you get rid of it. As of right now, nothing does a ground offensive like a few dozen tanks advancing at top speed with appropriate supp…
> Yup. The key point is, a weapon system becomes obsolete when something else does its job better, not when it becomes more vulnerable. When something valuable becomes more vulnerable, you protect it better. When it becomes less valuable because something else does the job better, then you get rid of it. What does a vulnerable tank do that self-propelled artillery doesn't do better? Not being vulnerable to small arms…
A T-72 is both easy to detect and easy to kill for someone with a Javelin, while the Javelin-man is hard to detect and non-trival to kill (at range) with the T-72.
The arms race between protective equiment (armor, shields, etc) and anti-armor weapons has been going on for over a thousand years, arguably longer (like when Roman pila would get stuck in enemy sheilds, making the shields useless, even if the pilum didn't kill the enemy soldier).
In our current age, the previous generation of tanks has been made obsolete by ATGM, just like Cuirassiers were obsolete at the outbreak of WW1 and WW1 tanks were obsolete at the outbreak of WW2.
Modern tanks with state-of-the art sensors and APS are much better protected against ATGM's. While still not the ideal platform for use against anti-tank weapons, at least they don't get slaughtered on first contact. If the enemy has a high concentration of ATGM armed infantry in an area, it's probably better to take them out with infantry, artillery and/or aircraft. Given the cost of ATGM's, this is cost-efficient. And if the ATGM's are spread out, a tank formation with good protection systems can affort to smash through, even if it comes at the cost of a few casualties, to maintain momentum.
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> If we'd only pour 10% of the investments that today goes into war machinery into peace research and conflict prevention, then this world would be a much safer place. If you get everyone to decide this, yes. But if you do this and your aggressive neighbor doesn't, your decision to forgo military spending can make the world less safe. Some parts of Europe are remembering this now.
You seem to have missed the "investment into peace research and conflict prevention" part of my post. Ironically, that's the part that you quoted.
What would this even mean?
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If you're talking about DJI or equivalents they only have 30 minutes or so of flight time and can carry at most one bomb at a time. They can be useful in guerrilla situations but firepower wise it's not even in the same league as a tank with 40-60 cannon rounds and several thousand machine gun rounds.
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.
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There must have been _some_ intersections of time/technology and/or cost/efficiency where this didn't hold? Where a weapon system became _so_ vulnerable that, despite being the best at its job, it still wasn't good enough. As an example, is there a point where hypersonic weapons become so effective that aircraft carriers are [temporarily?] retired? Surely the cost (time, money, human lives) that goes into the weapon…
With Russia fielding hypersonic weapons now, could you imagine if they threaten the US with "Send arms to Ukraine, we sink your aircraft carriers"? In that sense, hypersonic missiles may replace much more costly to maintain and much harder to deploy nuclear weapons. In fact, it looks like the US has 11 active aircraft carriers [1]. It seems that they are all near port right now [2], this might be the reason. [1] http…
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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.
The situation is a bit different in forested areas. Maybe modern aircraft have thermal imaging good enough to detect heat signatures from out of MANPAD range, dunno.
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Infantry disperse and hide. Tanks really struggle to do either.
https://imgur.com/tk10YHN.jpg Do you think you would be able to see this tank if it were 3000 meters away? Because the tank commander, with his set of night vision / thermal vision binoculars sees you. --------- If that tank commander closes the hatch and ducks down, you wont see him at all. In full hide position, the tank commander will only reveal himself and his tank when a nearby infantry asks for support. Of cou…
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> The infantry screen the tanks from enemy infantry Then you mean the infantry screen the enemy infantry from the tanks. You screen the threat, not what you're protecting.
There is nothing wrong with "The infantry screen the tanks from enemy infantry". Screening is just the act of keeping two things separated. It does not matter which side of the from they appear. Either way is correct. If you want to go the protection route, "The infantry protect the tanks from enemy infantry" is obviously intended over "The infantry protect the enemy infantry from the tanks".
It isn’t! I’m a professional in this field.
You're confusing a screen with a guard or cover force. Different tactical actions.
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There are a lot of voices that seem to believe that isolationism is the way to go and that this will protect their 'lifestyle' from being impacted by the war in Ukraine. It's interesting how apparently some of history's lessons are impossible to learn, the exact same thing happened in 1938 and the end result was a much bigger war. Also, the degree to which the world economies are now interconnected make it next to im…
I'm not a fan of our (US + NATO) current Ukraine policy, but that isn't because I'm an isolationist. I think it's just dumb policy, on several different dimensions. The version of the criticism you're leveling right now can be inverted very easily. That the people arguing for escalation in Ukraine, that it's "the exact same thing [that] happened in 1938" (it isn't), and that unless we do things like a NFZ it leads to…
So yes, even if you do give up on Ukraine, it won't stop there. In that, again, this is very much like 1938.
BTW, I should probably add at this point that I'm ethnically Russian as well as Russian citizen, although I've been living mostly out of the country for the past decade. But I still remember very well what our nationalists are, I'm familiar with the kind of political musings Putin gets his inspiration from, and my firm belief is that this is going to be a much bigger war than most everybody in the West currently anticipates.