War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)

#11

Post by faitswulff » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

I’m really appreciating the video game references - literally the article mentions the cost of elephants relative to horses in the Total War and Imperator series:

> Let’s take Total War: Rome II as an example: a unit of Roman (auxiliary) African elephants (12 animals), costs 180 upkeep, compared to 90 to 110 upkeep for 80 horses of auxiliary cavalry (there are quite a few types) – so one elephant (with a mahout) costs 15 upkeep against around 1.25 for a horse and rider (a 12:1 ratio). Paradox’s Imperator does something similar, with a single unit of war elephants requiring 1.08 upkeep, compared to just 0.32 for light cavalry; along with this, elephants have a heavy ‘supply weight’ – twice that of an equivalent number of cavalry (so something like a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of cost).

> Believe it or not, this understates just how hungry – and expensive – elephants are. The standard barley ration for a Roman horse was 7kg of barley per day (7 Attic medimnoi per month; Plb. 6.39.12); this would be supplemented by grazing. Estimates for the food requirements of elephants vary widely (in part, it is hard to measure the dietary needs of grazing animals), but elephants require in excess of 1.5% of their body-weight in food per day. Estimates for the dietary requirements of the Asian elephant can range from 135 to 300kg per day in a mix of grazing and fodder – and remember, the preference in war elephants is for large, mature adult males, meaning that most war elephants will be towards the top of this range. Accounting for some grazing (probably significantly less than half of dietary needs) a large adult male elephant is thus likely to need something like 15 to 30 times the food to sustain itself as a stable-fed horse.

Re: War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)

#12

Post by padobson » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

smogcutter wrote: post #10

It’s interesting that his analysis of war elephants has a lot of parallels to his thoughts about chemical weapons. In the hands of a sufficiently advanced military, both are an expensive, complicated solution in search of a problem, and both are easily neutralized by a peer competitor. https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

both are easily neutralized by a peer competitor.

This is what I was thinking the whole time. Rome was surrounded by peer competitors, and OP says their most effective use of elephants was against non-peer competitors like Spain or Gaul.

So why would competitors continue to use elephants? Not because Roma was susceptible, but because THEIR boarder competitors were susceptible.

Elephants were not worth it to defeat well-trained troops, but were more than worth it to defeat smaller, less disciplined armies/militias.

My guess is that Rome's peers were often using elephants to keep smaller competitors in check, and only used them against Rome because they happen to have them anyway.

Re: War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)

#13

Post by sandworm101 » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

smogcutter wrote: post #10

It’s interesting that his analysis of war elephants has a lot of parallels to his thoughts about chemical weapons. In the hands of a sufficiently advanced military, both are an expensive, complicated solution in search of a problem, and both are easily neutralized by a peer competitor. https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

>>in order to produce mass casualties in battlefield conditions, a chemical attacker has to deploy tons – and I mean that word literally – of this stuff.

While I do agree with much of what this guy has to say about elephants, he is totally wrong about chemical weapons. We don't use mustard gas because it would indeed require tons of gas and be ineffective, but chemical weapons have evolved in the last 100 years. Modern chemical weapons do not need tons.

Novichok literally translates to "new thing". Such nerve agents were developed in the 60s/70s/80s. Infinitesimal amounts of this stuff will kill. Hazmat suits and gas masks are irrelevant when one gram might contain 5000 lethal doses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novichok_agent#Effects_and_cou...

Re: War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)

#14

Post by wavefunction » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

ekanes wrote: post #6

Definitely interesting, but the post isn't about elephants vs wolves (no wolves are mentioned!) but about why the Romans didn't adopt the use of elephants in war. TLDR; Despite being theoretically SUPERBADASS (my words), elephants are only somewhat effective against prepared armies, but are expensive and hard to maintain, especially compared to horses.

And the elephants were explicitly linked to three war-elephant using states absorbed by the Roman Empire, Carthage, Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid Empire.

Re: War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)

#15

Post by jungletime » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

I would like to see wild elephants in a national park in the US. You can't really say they are not part of the eco system when mammoths only disappeared during the last ice age. Its basically the difference between a hairless cat. There are still plants around that relied on elephants to propagate them (osage orange)

Re: War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)

#16

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

smogcutter wrote: post #10

It’s interesting that his analysis of war elephants has a lot of parallels to his thoughts about chemical weapons. In the hands of a sufficiently advanced military, both are an expensive, complicated solution in search of a problem, and both are easily neutralized by a peer competitor. https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

> It’s interesting that his analysis of war elephants has a lot of parallels to his thoughts about chemical weapons.

Well, both technologies find themselves in the same situation; they are well understood by the militaries of their day, and those militaries have no interest in using them. It's not surprising that the same results might come about for the same reasons.

Re: War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)

#17

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

z3phyr wrote: post #4

nickbauman wrote: post #2

"Moreover, the Roman elephants were smaller African elephants, effectively useless against the large Asian elephants the Seleucids used" I thought African elephants were larger than Asian elephants?

There were two kinds of African Elephants; one from North Africa were domesticated and became extinct due to overexploitation. North African elephants were very small and lightly built compared to Asian varieties. The White African Elephants of the Savanah, to which we all are familiar were never domesticated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_elephant

> were domesticated and became extinct due to overexploitation

That would be a highly unusual trajectory.

Were they really domesticated? Indian elephants were never domesticated either, because it's more cost-effective to capture them from the wild than to invest the decades it takes to rear a calf in captivity.

And this sort of arrangement is vastly more conducive to extinction through overexploitation than domesticating the animal would be.

Re: War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)

#18

Post by smogcutter » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #13

smogcutter wrote: post #10

It’s interesting that his analysis of war elephants has a lot of parallels to his thoughts about chemical weapons. In the hands of a sufficiently advanced military, both are an expensive, complicated solution in search of a problem, and both are easily neutralized by a peer competitor. https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

>>in order to produce mass casualties in battlefield conditions, a chemical attacker has to deploy tons – and I mean that word literally – of this stuff. While I do agree with much of what this guy has to say about elephants, he is totally wrong about chemical weapons. We don't use mustard gas because it would indeed require tons of gas and be ineffective, but chemical weapons have evolved in the last 100 years . Mod…

The wikipedia article for sarin gas is also extremely frightening, but the example Bret gives of the Tokyo subway attack shows that it’s probably less effective than advertised in a modern military context. The bar isn’t “is this stuff deadly”, it’s is it deadly enough to overcome the expense, complication, and incompatibility with highly mobile modern doctrine to make it worth using on a militarily relevant scale over conventional options.

I’m certainly no expert, so I’m not going to go any further with “is this poison poisonous enough”, but that wikipedia article at least doesn’t seem to make the case.

Re: War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)

#19

Post by sandworm101 » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

smogcutter wrote: post #18

sandworm101 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>in order to produce mass casualties in battlefield conditions, a chemical attacker has to deploy tons – and I mean that word literally – of this stuff. While I do agree with much of what this guy has to say about elephants, he is totally wrong about chemical weapons. We don't use mustard gas because it would indeed require tons of gas and be ineffective, but chemical weapons have evolved in the last 100 years . Mod…

The wikipedia article for sarin gas is also extremely frightening, but the example Bret gives of the Tokyo subway attack shows that it’s probably less effective than advertised in a modern military context. The bar isn’t “is this stuff deadly”, it’s is it deadly enough to overcome the expense, complication, and incompatibility with highly mobile modern doctrine to make it worth using on a militarily relevant scale ov…

The tokyo attack was unprofessional. A military attack would be exponentially more effective. Sarin is also tame compared to some of the more nasty stuff out there.

Re: War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)

#20

Post by jcranmer » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #13

smogcutter wrote: post #10

It’s interesting that his analysis of war elephants has a lot of parallels to his thoughts about chemical weapons. In the hands of a sufficiently advanced military, both are an expensive, complicated solution in search of a problem, and both are easily neutralized by a peer competitor. https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

>>in order to produce mass casualties in battlefield conditions, a chemical attacker has to deploy tons – and I mean that word literally – of this stuff. While I do agree with much of what this guy has to say about elephants, he is totally wrong about chemical weapons. We don't use mustard gas because it would indeed require tons of gas and be ineffective, but chemical weapons have evolved in the last 100 years . Mod…

Well, how much does it take to create a cloud of poisonous gas that is sufficiently concentrated to induce lethality and also spreads reasonably quickly that people can't escape it?

Bret gives the example of the Tokyo terrorist attack that released sarin in several crowded subway cars... and killed 12 people. Grenades would have killed far more people far more quickly... and that's the point: chemical weapons are far less effective at delivering death than explosives are.

Edit: Wikipedia gives 7mg/m³ for a lethal concentration for one of the Novichok agents, 28mg/m³ for sarin.