WWII? Fabius did this to Hannibal more than a thousand years ago. The core of his strategy was to dunk on supplies, stall, and have the Carthaginians run out of food.
I imagine Iran, Ukraine, and Russia all know about Fabian strategy.
The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
301–310 of 701 posts
Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
Poland and the Baltics know they're next on Putin's list. So they're glad to help Ukraine. Better than fighting the Russians on home territory. Taiwan and Japan, though, aren't in Russia's line of fire. The cooperation with Ukraine is because Ukraine figured out how to stop Russia. Taiwan has a real threat, and if they can build defenses that mean China faces a years-long war, there probably won't be one.
Even the most optimistic Russian does not think Russia will ever get beyond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya which is not much more than Russia currently occupies. You really think they will eventually march over Ukraine on to Warsaw?? That’s as likely as the exiled Chinese government in Taiwan taking over China.
Ukraine is keeping Russia where it is at a tremendous expenditure of people and treasure.
Their success in the conflict is not guaranteed.
Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it also stands to ask, why isn't the bridge being constantly targeted? What factors are weighing ukrainian decisionmaking to not simply strike the hell out of this bridge until it falls? The strikes ukraine makes in russian territory seem like they are extremely successful but limited in quantity and scope. Why not push that envelope? Some factors must exist that prefer these attacks to be small scale headline ma…
> But it also stands to ask, why isn't the bridge being constantly targeted? What factors are weighing ukrainian decisionmaking to not simply strike the hell out of this bridge until it falls? This is a spitball, but there are several hundred thousand ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea (along with many more ethnic non-Ukrainians who were previously Ukrainian citizens and have been more-or-less forced to take on Russian citi…
Well they did already try and blow it up at least so that thought must have not crossed their mind. One wonders why they don't continue trying to blow it up though.
Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
#304Nukes prevented global super powers from going to war against each other for the past 80 years. Maybe the vast democratization and spread of cheap drones will prevent all these stupid little wars that have been fought since WWII. One can hope at least. The whole idea of the US going to war against China is idiotic once any half witted person spends at least 2 minutes thinking about the implications... But hey - it's been great for the military-industrial complex to profit off the fear mongering!
Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
#305Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
During WW2 in the United States, you had all sorts of consumer goods companies reorganized to output a prodigious amount of military supplies. There were multiple companies making the same model of things, with fairly rigorous QA to ensure quality and uniformity. For example, the BC-348 receiver, widely used in aircraft, was produced initially by RCA, and eventually "farmed out" to 3 other manufacturers. More than 4…
It's not a great comparison because Germany could not hit the US mainland. Even if there had been a single giant everything factory it wouldn't have mattered.
Then take the Sten submachine gun, designed so that every little machine shop in Britain could produce one.
Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US military knows full well the importance of logistics. TFA is somehow arguing for distributed distribution networks that are harder to track and attack. Why not advocate for improved defenses along the supply lines? Or is it down to percentages where just one good hit has large effect?
Ukraine is deploying AI enabled drones that require no fiber optic wires and no electronic tethering. They patrol autonomously and identify targets; a human authorizes the strike and they take out targets by themselves. This is the holy grail of modern warfare; destroy the enemy’s rear staging and logistics. If they don’t have fuel or ammo, they are a defenseless sitting target.
These kinds of systems are rare or super rare.
Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
People doubt the timelines, not the claims. The timelines are pure fantasy and have been since the start.
> People doubt the timelines, not the claims. People doubted the claims, too. Particularly landing and re-use. Concrete example: https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/13/ula-plans-to-introduce...
>“When you talk about conventional technologies on a booster like you see other people doing, and being able to recover and reuse that booster 15 times with relatively minimial refurbishmoent costs, that’s pretty darn challenging, and maybe not the right place, in our view, to start on that problem,” Bruno said.
This doesn't really sound like doubting any claim; he's talking about how his organization was approaching it given their limited resources.
Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
#309How much would electrification reduce the fuel logistics burden?
Electricity can be moved anywhere in the world instantly, if you can dig a trench and lay cables. The problem, of course, is density, some combination of (energy OR power) per (liter OR gram) depending on the application:
Batteries don't come close to the energy/power density of jet fuel, but what about whatever fuel armored vehicles use? And what about other electrical storage options, such as hydrogen fuel cells?
Some options might be uneconomical in a civilian environment where logisitics is relatively cheap but fine in a warfare environment where logisitics is far more expensive both in moving assets and in the consequences of logisitical failure.
Also, I'm assuming vehicles consume most of the fuel, but maybe there are other significant applications? And I'm assuming throughput on electrical lines is sufficient - it's fast but how much energy can you move per hour? - but that's something I've never had to think about.
Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years The Russia/Ukraine war has a goal, to make Ukraine either part of Russia or a client state. What's the goal of the US/Iran war? So far it seems like the goal is to mostly return to the status quo prior to the war. I can't imagine that could continue 5 years because there's just not an objective. Of course, I could easily be mistaken.
There hasn't been a clear goal for an American war since the first Gulf War.
clear goal is making trillions to war profiteer friends, is this too hard to see for the public?