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Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology (2010)

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Re: Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology (2010)

#51

Post by badpun »

jojobas wrote: post #20
gpderetta wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more complicated. Both sides are consuming huge quantities of cheap artillery, drones, SAM, anti-tank mines and vehicles. HIMARS and smart artillery shells can make up for differences in fire powers, but only up to a point. Better tanks and IFV increase crew survivability, but they still get taken out of combats by drones, artillery and mines. I'm sure Ukraine air force would love long range AA missiles…

Artillery wasn't cheap in WW1 and it isn't cheap now. Dumb 155mm howitzer shells are ~$3k apiece. The cheapest SAMs (ex-Soviet MANPADs) are easily 20 times that.

> Dumb 155mm howitzer shells are ~$3k apiece.

In the West. In Russia (according to NYT piece), it's $600.

Re: Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology (2010)

#52

Post by hef19898 »

nulld3v wrote: post #49
hef19898 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US lost in Vietnam, in fact the Paris treaty came as close to unconditional surrender as it gets without using the term. Same in Afghanistan, NATO lost hard after being slowly kicked out of the country. In both cases, none of the US or NATO strategic goals were achieved, while almost all of the opposing sides were. If you think the US won in Vietnam, Iraq won the Gulf War (number two, in the 90s).

The parent is claiming "the US won until they lost", which I guess doesn't contradict your post lol.

Yeah, same way Germany won two world wars. Until around the half way mark, then they lost. Or a soccer team wins a match by being ahead 2 - 0 at half time and then losing 2-3.

Re: Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology (2010)

#53

Post by geraldhh »

thriftwy wrote: post #13
dgan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Ukrainian conflict shows the opposite?

Does it? FPVs and Lancet drones and anti-ship missiles and Shahed/Geran' reliably show their ability to hit many of orders of magnitude value targets. The future of the warfare is when you have no high-value targets at all on the battlefield and everything is spread out as evenly as possible.

> The future of the warfare is when you have no high-value targets at all on the battlefield and everything is spread out as evenly as possible.

that would put the utmost importance on communication and orchestration

Re: Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology (2010)

#54

Post by genman »

hef19898 wrote: post #44
genman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that many downvoters don't like that the things are named properly by their intent - I take it as showing support to the genocide in both cases. It still remains a fact that the genocidal war started by Russia has not yet been decided and both, attacking and defending sides are trying to figure out the weapon systems to accomplish their military goals and these weapon systems are going through rapid development…

The only side accused of Genozid in the current Gaza war is Israel. October 7th was a terror attack, not Genozid. What Russia does in Ukraine is a conventional war, not Genozid neither.

Conventional war with the intent to destroy a nation is still a genocide.

Terrorist attack with the intent to destroy as many members of a group as possible is still a genocide.

dang, when it comes to moderation then my intent is not to inflict a flamewar, but as I have pointed out, there is a group of people on HN who are actively supporting genocide against Ukrainians and Jews. We don't call Holocaust a German Jewish conflict for reason.

Re: Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology (2010)

#55

Post by genman »

hef19898 wrote: post #52
nulld3v wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent is claiming "the US won until they lost", which I guess doesn't contradict your post lol.

Yeah, same way Germany won two world wars. Until around the half way mark, then they lost. Or a soccer team wins a match by being ahead 2 - 0 at half time and then losing 2-3.

Nazi Germany won clear victories against Poland and France.

Had UK given up and signed a peace with Germany then it could have been possible that there wouldn't have been what we call WW2 today at all. Given what Germans planned to do then fortunately it didn't happen. We can thank stubbornness of Churchill for this. But Germany made it even worse - it declared war on United States.

But there were no treaties between Germany and Allies until Germany had unconditionally surrendered.

But my claim was a little different. I wrote that US didn't lose until it "lost its sight". I would argue that it was not understood what is US actually doing in Afghanistan and when you don't have any idea what you are doing then you can't win anything.

Re: Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology (2010)

#56

Post by genman »

thriftwy wrote: post #39
genman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly, but Russia internally felt that they lost. And this was significant contributing factor to the collapse of their empire.

I think it was different and more like the Vietnam fallout, "with the new reconassiance data, it turns out we fought against ourselves" The idea which ended both wars was that continuing this war is a war crime against our own nation even as we continue to score victories.

USSR simply ran out of resources to continue the war. They would have happily continued if they could have been able to afford it. In the end the country had dire deficit of even basic everyday items including food. But similarly to the Vietnam war it was not able to "sell" the losses to their own people, especially on the occupied territories (Soviet Republics), where it was seen as another Russian expansionist invasion.

Re: Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology (2010)

#57

Post by thriftwy »

genman wrote: post #56
thriftwy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was different and more like the Vietnam fallout, "with the new reconassiance data, it turns out we fought against ourselves" The idea which ended both wars was that continuing this war is a war crime against our own nation even as we continue to score victories.

USSR simply ran out of resources to continue the war. They would have happily continued if they could have been able to afford it. In the end the country had dire deficit of even basic everyday items including food. But similarly to the Vietnam war it was not able to "sell" the losses to their own people, especially on the occupied territories (Soviet Republics), where it was seen as another Russian expansionist inva…

> especially on the occupied territories (Soviet Republics)

A majority of these republics were founded by the USSR by carving them out of RSFSR, without the regard of wishes of people who ended up split by these borders.

I guess its karma when USSR wanted to be the example of affirmative action socialist state ran by ethnic minorities, only to get framed for imperialism by the autonomous republics it has created.

Re: Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology (2010)

#58

Post by dmoy »

sornaensis wrote: post #33
dmoy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US military has known this for a long time, it just chooses to bury its head in the sand and ignore it. See e.g. MC02 where they lost to opfor with what was literally like a cheaply thrown together zerg rush, and then just reset the scenario for a do-over.

MC02 had a lot of problems but calling it a zerg rush exposes your ignorance-- it was a very sophisticated and well-coordinated surprise attack. The people running the wargame rejected the outcome as a likely tactic to be used by the hypothetical adversary and guess what, they have been proven right, see: the war in iraq. The iraqi army completely failed to hold initiative against the coalition or organize coherent r…

Cheap as in material cost, not cheap as in subpar tactics. No doubt the Marine dude in charge of that was very good at strategy, but by definition he had less resources for the exercise do anything he did would have to be cheaply thrown together.

And a successful zerg rush kinda has to be well coordinated, with pretty tight timing, otherwise it doesn't work. It wasn't meant negatively. Maybe I've just watched way too much OGN StarCraft.

That's precisely why I'm calling it a zerg rush. It's cheaper units, en masse, defeating a technology and cost-wise much more expensive foe.

You make a good point about the reset though, it would be a waste of resources to not reset at that point.

Re: Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology (2010)

#59

Post by dmoy »

dmoy wrote: post #58
sornaensis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MC02 had a lot of problems but calling it a zerg rush exposes your ignorance-- it was a very sophisticated and well-coordinated surprise attack. The people running the wargame rejected the outcome as a likely tactic to be used by the hypothetical adversary and guess what, they have been proven right, see: the war in iraq. The iraqi army completely failed to hold initiative against the coalition or organize coherent r…

Cheap as in material cost, not cheap as in subpar tactics. No doubt the Marine dude in charge of that was very good at strategy, but by definition he had less resources for the exercise do anything he did would have to be cheaply thrown together. And a successful zerg rush kinda has to be well coordinated, with pretty tight timing, otherwise it doesn't work. It wasn't meant negatively. Maybe I've just watched way too…

Maybe there's some negative context I'm missing about the phrase zerg rush. I like zerg rushes, they're difficult to execute in high level competition, and there's comparatively fewer dominant zerg players (compared the one zerg bonjwa savior vs like alllll the terran from the heyday of sc1)

Re: Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology (2010)

#60

Post by hef19898 »

genman wrote: post #55
hef19898 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, same way Germany won two world wars. Until around the half way mark, then they lost. Or a soccer team wins a match by being ahead 2 - 0 at half time and then losing 2-3.

Nazi Germany won clear victories against Poland and France. Had UK given up and signed a peace with Germany then it could have been possible that there wouldn't have been what we call WW2 today at all. Given what Germans planned to do then fortunately it didn't happen. We can thank stubbornness of Churchill for this. But Germany made it even worse - it declared war on United States. But there were no treaties between…

The Wehrmacht was stopped before Moscow by the Soviets before lend-lease supplies had any meaningful impact. And the Soviet would not have ended the war when the UK exited it. Which never was an option to begin with, a seperate peace with the western allies was one Hitler's many pipe dreams.

The victory against Poland was, in the end, meaningless with the failure of Barbarossa. As was the victory against France in the West, as soon as the war in Borth Africa was lost by the axis. There never was a path to Axis victory, and winning the first to rounds by points is meabingless if you get knocked out by round 6. Should be self-explanatory.

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