"Just as Western Civilization staggered and faded after the fall of Rome, Western Civilization has never really recovered from the shock of the Great War. Cultures which endured and developed over a thousand years were wiped out, never to return again. Western culture, abstract thought and artistic development: nothing important has developed since 1919; we’re still reeling from the shock." What a load of bollocks. T…
Or maybe he heard of situationism, dada, etc., and classifies them under "nothing important".
Frankly, I would too--but in terms of culture and philosophy there were certainly significant advances post-1919.
"When Nazis attacked the USSR, was there an advance warning?" Stalin had plenty of advance warning - there were even people defecting from the German ranks and telling them that the Germans were coming (they were probably shot for their troubles). Even after the invasion started Stalin refused to believe the reports coming from frontline units for a long time after the invasion started. See: http://www.simonsebagmont…
Intelligence information is speculative and absolutely cannot be compared to an official warning.
"official warning"
Does this mean you would only count it as a "warning" if the Nazis actually sent an envoy that said, "Hey, we're coming for you now?"
If he puts his missiles on rail cars, you haven’t got a chance of hitting them all. So it was, metaphorically, with the actual battlewagon; when it was at the peak of its capabilities, it was overcome by the manoeuvre warfare tactics of the aircraft carrier (which is itself probably made obsolete in real modern warfare by the cruise missile, the internet and the satellite).
Don't forget robots! Man, you think the guided missiles in the first Gulf War were cool? Now we can kill people entirely by electromechanical proxy, staying out of the line of fire and incurring little to no risk ourselves! Man, we're living in the future! What a bunch of pussies we are.
Like Bill Hicks said, why can't we use this technology to shoot food into the mouths of hungry people instead?
except they are extremely expensive and hard to defend. They are great for projecting power against countries that can't defend against them, but extremely ineffective against a remotely comparable force. They are an obvious high priority. Ever see Independence Day or, more recently, Battle LA? Didn't you find it stupid that once the command ship are destroyed, the enemy essentially dies? This is what aircraft carrie…
except they are extremely expensive and hard to defend. They are great for projecting power against countries that can't defend against them, but extremely ineffective against a remotely comparable force. They are an obvious high priority There are 190-odd countries in the world. The US Navy's aircraft carriers are extremely effective against at least 185 of 'em. All the countries with a "remotely comparable force" a…
1000 anti-ship missiles cost far less than an aircraft carrier with crew and aircraft aboard. There are a number of non-nuclear powers with the ability to launch 1000 anti-ship missiles against an American task force.
I've observed a principle that militaries build to win the last total war they fought. This is why guys like Billy Mitchell ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell ) were ignored about the importance of air power leading up to WWII. The status quo was to gear up for another WWI, complete with entrenched and barely mobile front lines. But of course the German Blitzkreig, a brilliant archetype of maneuver warfare…
Ok come on, there was no need for them to go to war with Russia AT ALL, if Hitler had focused on Britain and waited until the West was completely defeated (a few years at the most), he would not have lost. Russia divided the Germans in a way that was unnecessary.
Britain had the naval and air power to hold off Germany. Russia had sprawling territory and the winter; Britain had the English Channel. Germany would have been better served to win the North Africa campaign; that might have actually left Germany with a defensible position. On the other hand, the entire purpose of the Nazi regime was to conquer eastern Europe, enslave or exterminate its population, and resettle Germa…
Yes, if they had taken North Africa, then swept up through the Middle East they would have endless oil, and then it could have been a short hop into Russia from the South.
Ok come on, there was no need for them to go to war with Russia AT ALL, if Hitler had focused on Britain and waited until the West was completely defeated (a few years at the most), he would not have lost. Russia divided the Germans in a way that was unnecessary.
Britain had the naval and air power to hold off Germany. Russia had sprawling territory and the winter; Britain had the English Channel. Germany would have been better served to win the North Africa campaign; that might have actually left Germany with a defensible position. On the other hand, the entire purpose of the Nazi regime was to conquer eastern Europe, enslave or exterminate its population, and resettle Germa…
Point of order: In retrospect we can clearly see that the RAF was losing the Battle of Britain. It was within weeks of being completely eliminated by the Luftwaffe, when Hitler, quite unexpectedly for the British, switched to a strategic bombing campaign of major population and industrial centres. If the Luftwaffe had air supremacy, then naval supremacy and invasion would have followed. Invasion would have left very few credible options for any D-Day like operations.
I think missile silos are stationary is pretty easy to understand. They're easier to guard and if you look at when they were built rather than their current functional use (its debatable if there is one when looking at SLBM and B-52/B-2 dropped nuclear weapons). In the 1950s, when ICBM projects began, the threat was not thermonuclear weapons, but fission weapons. It was thought that the silos might survive a direct/i…
And accuracies measured in hundreds of metres.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. "Real-world data show that some high-quality GPS SPS receivers currently attain better than 3 meter horizontal position accuracy" [1], and military GPS is even more accurate.
Take the $23 billion dollars it takes to build the first Gerald R. Ford Carrier and invest that into various decentralized, independent, small technologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_ship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212_submarine A fleet of Sea Shadow type vessels and Air Independent Propulsion submarines combined with a good land-based air force would make life very difficult for carrier battle group…
This isn't the scale I'm talking about. You don't need a fleet of $500 million USD submarines. 11 US aircraft carriers? 11 missiles. $100+Billion vs $15 Million. 30000 soldiers vs 0. During the cold war this is the strategy that Russia took - let the US build expensive ships, they build [relatively] cheap missiles. The Chinese are doing the same with the Dong Feng missiles.
One missile won't get through. You don't encounter a carrier by itself--it has a combat air patrol, one or two Aegis cruisers, and two or three Aegis destroyers. Each Aegis system can track 100 targets at a time and launch countermeasures.
However, missiles do scale well. Even 1000 missiles will cost much less than the carrier and will almost certainly take it down.
> IMHO it's an overwhelming act of condescension pretending to be smarter than thousands of admirals and military advisors, many of them with lots of real world experience fighting wars and stuff. I thought the same thing, but then I remembered that the military leadership and tactics during The Great War were pretty damn lousy (e.g. trench warfare). For some reason it seems like it's surprisingly common for wide var…
then I remembered that the military leadership and tactics during The Great War were pretty damn lousy (e.g. trench warfare) What's so lousy about trench warfare? I mean, yes, it sucks, but it's a Nash equilibrium given the technology at the time (very good machine guns, lousy tanks and aircraft). If your enemy has trenches, you need trenches too. What else would you have done?
What else would you have done?
I'd do what actually happened: innovate with technology and tactics to break through the trench line.