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The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

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Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#271

Post by rank0 »

bilbo0s wrote: post #175
karaterobot wrote: post #92

The long post-war era of peace is due to a number of factors, but the one we don't talk about enough is that the U.S. spent untold trillions of dollars becoming a global police force. This may be the biggest factor. I believe it is certainly the prerequisite for any others to have had an effect. The problem is that the U.S. has a tiger by the tail: if they want to continue in this role, they'll need to step up spendi…

This thinking is also kind of a problem in itself though right. I mean, even if there was no China. OK. Great. Now what? You've still got India giving Russia as many drones as Russia desires every month. Is India, or even South Africa for that matter, ever going to lose its ability to produce drones for Russia? No. The essential problem is that we live in a multi-polar world. Multiple nations can sustain themselves.…

The EU is not even remotely self sufficient.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#272

Post by edrxty »

andrewflnr wrote: post #266
13of40 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember how the US went into Afghanistan with HMMWVs (aluminum bodied cars with canvas doors) and M16a2s (full length battle rifles with iron sights) and left with MRAPs and A4s. You learn stuff when you switch from training to combat.

Sort of a nitpick, but really not: length has nothing to do with whether a rifle is a "battle rifle". The difference between a battle rifle and assault rifle is all about the cartridge, not length of the barrel.

I think that's probably arguable. Most of these kinds of definitions are much more length focused and the length does most of the same things as having a larger cartridge.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#273

Post by hirvi74 »

rossdavidh wrote: post #127
newuser94303 wrote: post #41

I think that Globalization has increased the costs of war. You don't want to attack your suppliers. I also think that China is probably a paper tiger on offense but they are trying not to look like an easy target on defense. Most of their recent battles have been fist fights in the Himalayas. Deglobalization is an attempt to make war feasible because some strong countries feel like they are losing economic war and wa…

France and Germany had a lot of trade in 1913. Russia and Ukraine had a lot of trade in 2013. Every civil war ever fought, was between sides that did a lot of "trade". The Opium War (no small conflict) was fought over trade policy. The U.S.A. and Canada/UK did a lot of trade prior to the War of 1812. Napoleon's invasion of Russia was done despite the fact that the two sides had a lot of trade. Trade has never been a…

I did not know any of this, but rationally thinking it makes sense.

No need to trade any goods if said goods can be just be taken (assuming one's side wins).

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#274

Post by roenxi »

jcranmer wrote: post #212
hinkley wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WWII started just before WWI. Some people call the Second World War part 2 of the first. At the time people were worried that the settlement with Germany was just an armistice. Those people turned out to be right. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that we should be very very careful treating the wars like they were unrelated incidents. They absolutely were not.

> WWII started just before WWI. Some people call the Second World War part 2 of the first. Ehh...... WWI is complicated, but it essentially boils down to a great power war caused by a breakdown in relations that reached the point that diplomats were unwilling or incapable of keeping the war from breaking out. The result of WWI was that all of the traditional great powers (both those who won and lost) were spent [1].…

Another interesting metric is royal families - pre-WWI, we saw monarchs in Italy, Germany, Russia, Austria and many others [0]. They mostly get ground down and collapse through the World Wars. And the British 'monarchy' that came out on the other side of WWII was crippled as their empire collapsed and they don't have much power any more.

A weak showing by the European aristocrats. Clueless bunch.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchies_in_Europe#Territori...

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#275

Post by n1b0m »

karaterobot wrote: post #92

The long post-war era of peace is due to a number of factors, but the one we don't talk about enough is that the U.S. spent untold trillions of dollars becoming a global police force. This may be the biggest factor. I believe it is certainly the prerequisite for any others to have had an effect. The problem is that the U.S. has a tiger by the tail: if they want to continue in this role, they'll need to step up spendi…

Peace in Europe maybe but there were plenty of wars going on in the rest of the world post WWII.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#276

Post by jonstewart »

hunter-gatherer wrote: post #270
ared38 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US and the HMMWV did great at the combat part of Iraq and Afghanistan. The real switch was from conventional military operations to the long peace. "Instead, the new incentive for most countries would be to build a military in a way that aims to minimize the political costs... it makes sense not to build an army for conventional operations but instead with an eye towards the kinds of actions which mitigate the ha…

> The US and the HMMWV did great at the combat part of Iraq and Afghanistan. The real switch was from conventional military operations to the long peace The combat part was ok I guess, but what OP is pointing out was what we went to conflict with. Lots of money was spent upgrading Humvees with armor and turret mounts that didn't exist. The equipment fielded by US troops actually looked very different from a compariso…

I think the hypothetical you posit is wrong, as US doctrine places primacy on air power. In Iraq, I & II, air strikes at the outset destroyed much of the Iraqi armor and spurred a lot of desertion.

I’m not a military and/or Iraq war expert so I don’t want to argue definitively, but I don’t think you can say US losses would have been significantly higher had the Iraqi army had heavier weapons and fighting skills — they’d have needed effective air defense, too.

I think the Ru-UKR war shows the vulnerability of contemporary air forces to air defense, however, and that Western/NATO forces themselves lack cost-effective short-range and medium-range air defense systems. The US Air Force fields exquisite weapons (“platforms”) and these may prove useless in a conflict like Ru-UKR. Or, perhaps, they’re good enough to overcome the difficulties that the Sukhoi/MiG-based air forces of either side have encountered. Hard to know.

Range and mobility in artillery systems also seems like a weak point for the US military. The Excalibur precision shell is very expensive but likely cost effective—one shot, one kill. But the US M777 towed howitzer costs ~$3.7M (titanium) while the French Caesar costs $5-6M and can outrange the M777 in addition to driving away immediately after firing.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#277

Post by speed_spread »

eastbound wrote: post #244
13of40 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember how the US went into Afghanistan with HMMWVs (aluminum bodied cars with canvas doors) and M16a2s (full length battle rifles with iron sights) and left with MRAPs and A4s. You learn stuff when you switch from training to combat.

Remember when the French went to field war in 1914 bearing the official costume with BRIGHT RED pants? Yeah you really forget about war when there is no war for a generation. Well they did have unbeatable prices on this red taint from a producer in… Germany. Yup. Some people are actually good at war.

Maybe it was a strategy. Once you lose enough troops, red does become good camouflage?

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#278

Post by telotortium »

soared wrote: post #267
telotortium wrote: post #260

A book-length critique of the idea that the "long peace" means that the world in general has gotten more peaceful: Only the Dead: The Persistence of War in the Modern Age by Bear F. Braumoeller[0]. I came across the book recently, and it argues that we won't be able to statistically tell if the world is in fact getting more peaceful for about a century. The incidence of war as well as the number of dead doesn't seem…

I thought that WW 1 and 2 killed x% of the world/us population and that the current ME wars are not at that same scale, is that incorrect?

Not the current wars, but the Iran-Iraq War, which was in the 1980s and was a WWI-style trench clusterfuck.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#279

Post by TexanFeller »

edrxty wrote: post #272
andrewflnr wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of a nitpick, but really not: length has nothing to do with whether a rifle is a "battle rifle". The difference between a battle rifle and assault rifle is all about the cartridge, not length of the barrel.

I think that's probably arguable. Most of these kinds of definitions are much more length focused and the length does most of the same things as having a larger cartridge.

To some degree but even if you put a 24" barrel on your 5.56 it's still got nowhere near the oomph of my 16" barreled 7.62x51.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#280

Post by TexanFeller »

safety1st wrote: post #6

This stuff about the world being peaceful due to the industrial revolution doesn't make a lot of sense to me. For one thing, the IR significantly predated WW1 and WW2. It didn't prevent those, so how'd it cause the "long peace" afterwards? The predominant theory about this in international relations is hegemonic stability theory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemonic_stability_theory - there have been several peri…

Mutually assured destruction has surely played a big part. Peace through the threat of nuclear annihilation.
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