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The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

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Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#31

Post by HankB99 »

krapp wrote: post #22
jacobush wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or my favorite order never heard on the bridge of Enterprise "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" . Fine, often it would go against the ethos of what they are trying to do. But sometimes, they could have beamed home the away team and proceeded to rain fiery death from above with photon torpedoes or whatever.

They have phasers with enough power to boil the oceans of a planet, and torpedoes that can travel faster than light. Yet every conflict takes place at extremely close proximity, often on the same plane, as if they were ships in the age of sail. They have force fields with a critical flaw (harmonic resonance means any energy weapon using the same frequency as the shields can just shoot right through them) but whenever…

I've always been a bit disappointed in the weapons available far into the future. I tried watching one series and the opening scene involved good guys shooting at bad guys and hiding behind boulders and such. It just looked so much like the conflict sequence in High Noon. I couldn't watch further. And they still suffered from the "good guy bullets" vs. "bad guy bullets" phenomenon. A good guy can run unscathed (or with superficial wounds, at worst) through a hail of "bad guy bullets." Then they turn and fire three "good guy bullets" and five bad guys drop. Even my current favorite "The Expanse" has a lot of human aimed weapons. I expect that in the future that any weapons that fire a projectile would have an aiming system that would put the projectile dead on the target unless the target can take evasive action once a ballistic projectile is in flight. But really, I'd expect projectiles to be replaced by directed energy weapons by then. Maybe Star Trek gets that right with Phasors. Do Phasors ever miss? (Check that - should be Phasers. Phasors are weapons used by college math and physics professors.)

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#32

Post by saiya-jin »

me_me_me wrote: post #6
nephrite wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying wraiths lack firepower, so they provide no real air support. Just fast transportation/communication.

Strafing runs in WW2 were almost completely ineffective but all infantry were reporting huge morale loss when they were happening.

Strafing was quite effective against vehicles, trains, landed aircraft etc. But yes against infantry it didn't make much sense, something about going too fast in shaky airplane trying to hit tiny ants running randomly left and right because they noticed the plane well before plane noticed them

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#33

Post by fmoronzirfas »

dreen wrote: post #10

It seems the author also missed the fact orcs are perfectly alright with cannibalism, which further alleviates the supply problem, perhaps even to the point of not requiring the supplies at all (a few thousand orcs eaten along the way wont make much difference). I doubt this has much precedent in history.

I think orcs eating orcs only happens in the movies. In the books orcs don’t do that. What he missed is orcs eating human flesh

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#34

Post by arethuza »

b0rsuk wrote: post #25
HenryKissinger wrote: post #2

Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).

Actually the author also has a 3 part article about war elephants https://acoup.blog/2019/07/26/collections-war-elephants-part... He is of the opinion that elephants were okay (not great) on battlefield, but awful in terms of logistics, supply usage and breeding. A horse reaches adulthood in 4 years. An elephant needs 15, and pregnancy lasts over 3 years. There are no known examples of breeding elephants. Supply-wise…

Tolkien wrote a lovely letter to a fan about Sam and the soldiers he served alongside on the Western Front:

"My ‘Samwise’ is indeed (as you note) largely a reflexion of the English soldier—grafted on the village-boys of early days, the memory of the privates and my batmen that I knew in the 1914 War, and recognized as so far superior to myself."

https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/sam-gamgee-and-to...

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#35

Post by mcguire »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #2

Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).

If you're not familiar with Corey Olsen (https://tolkienprofessor.com/), one of his frequent points is that, while the First Age elves had some air support in the form of Manwë's eagles, Morgoth didn't until he invented winged dragons shortly before the final battle.

(Balrogs don't fly.)

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#36

Post by mcguire »

z3phyr wrote: post #21
nephrite wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying wraiths lack firepower, so they provide no real air support. Just fast transportation/communication.

They lacked physical firepower, but they had metaphysical/magical firepower. I imagine they purposefully filled gondorian soldier's mind with dread and misery using their powers (think fighter planes with capabilities of high end electronic and cyber warfare capabilities instead of traditional weapons) If not for Gandalf using his own metaphysical powers to give hope to the soldiers, I imagine the gondorians would ha…

Metaphysical chemical weapons.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#37

Post by arethuza »

pjc50 wrote: post #23
KineticLensman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross includes (spoiler) an assault on the city of Leeds in the UK by a combined arms Elven battle group. The elves have Battle-tested air-land integration doctrine that sees them using their dragons in a close air support role. The elves use other magical means for ISR of the deep battle. Stross’ elves are somewhat more waffen-SS than Tolkien’s

This results in a dragon vs. RAF Tornado dogfight. He got an ex-RAF chap to consult on the technical detail too.

I seem to recall it was a pair of Eurofighter Typhoons rather than Tornados?

Oh dear, now I'll have to read it all again just to check.

Edit: Superb book, horrifying and laugh out loud funny (although not in the same places).

Edit2: BBC/HBO please do a version of the Laundry Files once you are finished with HDM!

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#38

Post by csunbird »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #12
HenryKissinger wrote: post #2

Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).

They had ghost reinforcements that executed a textbook flank[1]. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanking_maneuver

In books, the ghost army was used to rout enemy at south and gather (now free to leave the region) soldiers at that region and transport them with (captured) enemy ships to the battlefield.

The flanking maneuver is done, but with actual humans, not with ghosts.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#39

Post by gadtfly »

vector_rotcev wrote: post #7

Jut in case anyone doesn't do the date-math/scroll down past the comments, all 5 of the following blog posts are finished and linked to half way through the comments (ctrl+f: pingback).

Parts II-VI:

https://acoup.blog/2019/05/17/collections-the-siege-of-gondo...

https://acoup.blog/2019/05/24/collections-the-siege-of-gondo...

https://acoup.blog/2019/05/31/collections-the-siege-of-gondo...

https://acoup.blog/2019/06/07/collections-the-siege-of-gondo...

https://acoup.blog/2019/06/14/collections-the-siege-of-gondo...

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#40

Post by mcguire »

krapp wrote: post #22
jacobush wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or my favorite order never heard on the bridge of Enterprise "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" . Fine, often it would go against the ethos of what they are trying to do. But sometimes, they could have beamed home the away team and proceeded to rain fiery death from above with photon torpedoes or whatever.

They have phasers with enough power to boil the oceans of a planet, and torpedoes that can travel faster than light. Yet every conflict takes place at extremely close proximity, often on the same plane, as if they were ships in the age of sail. They have force fields with a critical flaw (harmonic resonance means any energy weapon using the same frequency as the shields can just shoot right through them) but whenever…

"It's been established that transporter buffers can be used to "back up" a person, even long term (in the TNG episode "Relics," Scotty is discovered having stored himself in a transporter buffer for decades with no ill effect.)"

Well, teck-nik-ally,...

Didn't another officer enter the transporter with Scott but not survive the process?

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