NationStates

Manokan Republic wrote:Conscripts did far worse in combat than volunteers in WWII in general, and when professional units went up against conscripts it was generally a massacre, such as in the eastern front with the germans vs. the Soviet union.

Manokan Republic wrote:

Spirit of Hope wrote:
There is basically no evidence to support the idea that conscription causes soldiers to be less motivated than a volunteer force. It is a common saying, but just because people say it doesn't make it true.

Note that WW1 and WW2 were fought by conscription on all sides. It is hard to argue any of the sides suffered moral problems because they were using conscription.



The main advantages are political and economic. Conscription generally saves money on low end soldiers, since they are forced to be there you don't have to pay them competitively to the open job market. However you also have to have the political will to enforce conscription, which can be hard in the face of unpopular wars or engagements. The nation's that still maintain conscription generally have the political will because they face existential threats, see South Korea and Israel.

Further consideration is that while conscription will fill out lower ranks there can be a struggle to get quality personnel to stick around and become NCOs. But that is a struggle a volunteer force can face as well.

A final consideration is how many people are being conscripted and how you are choosing them, all adults when they hit a certain age, only men, only a percentage of, etc.

Conscripts did far worse in combat than volunteers in WWII in general, and when professional units went up against conscripts it was generally a massacre, such as in the eastern front with the germans vs. the Soviet union.

Manokan Republic wrote: Most of the U.S. frontline infantry were volunteers in WWII and not, conscripts as well, as they generally didn't expect front-line troops to be successful if they were overly filled with conscripts. However, it's fair to say WWII is an exception to the rule, as when your own homeland is about to be destroyed people will generally be more motivated to fight, vs. a random small-scale war people don't find to be immediately engaging. Essentially conscripts tend to be worse at their jobs and have worse morale than volunteers in general, due to less training and organization, as well as less motivation to join the military in the first place, but that doesn't mean they will be automatically bad.

Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:

Manokan Republic wrote:Conscripts did far worse in combat than volunteers in WWII in general, and when professional units went up against conscripts it was generally a massacre, such as in the eastern front with the germans vs. the Soviet union.

They did so bad wikipedia.org (your favourite website) denotes Operation Bagration as the greatest military defeat in German military history.

Puzikas wrote:

Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:They did so bad wikipedia.org (your favourite website) denotes Operation Bagration as the greatest military defeat in German military history.

Tbh that's underselling up OPB was such a vicious thrashing of the rectal cavity that it is without peer before or since

Genuinely mad

Also it was a conscript vs conscript army lol

Champagne Socialist Sharifistan wrote:Do people with high school diploma, military experience and military leadership and management training (but no university degree) necessarily make bad military officers?

Amidia- wrote:

Puzikas wrote:

Tbh that's underselling up OPB was such a vicious thrashing of the rectal cavity that it is without peer before or since

Genuinely mad

Also it was a conscript vs conscript army lol

Exactly it was conscript v conscript, obviously a real professional army would have beat either side, perhaps both.

Amidia- wrote:

Champagne Socialist Sharifistan wrote:Do people with high school diploma, military experience and military leadership and management training (but no university degree) necessarily make bad military officers?

Taking in enlisted personnel to go through officer training is pretty normal, maybe not as a sole source of officer recruits.

Puzikas wrote:this is what all conscript armies do to a nation

I can't believe conscript only managed to make Army Group Center vanish lmao typical conscript army can't complete objectives

Korva wrote:Soviets had like a 10:1 advantage in guns.

They could have used trained monkeys as infantry and done just as well.

Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:

Manokan Republic wrote:Conscripts did far worse in combat than volunteers in WWII in general, and when professional units went up against conscripts it was generally a massacre, such as in the eastern front with the germans vs. the Soviet union.

They did so bad wikipedia.org (your favourite website) denotes Operation Bagration as the greatest military defeat in German military history.

Gallia- wrote:Part of the reason Galla is a conscript army fueled by the principle of mass is because it secretly channels high Bagration energy.

You can nuke it all you want that just makes it stronger.

Except the Sturmoviks are Hawker Hurricanes with Vickers S guns I guess.

Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:

Gallia- wrote:Part of the reason Galla is a conscript army fueled by the principle of mass is because it secretly channels high Bagration energy.

You can nuke it all you want that just makes it stronger.

Except the Sturmoviks are Hawker Hurricanes with Vickers S guns I guess.

Sweden before acquiring a professional army: 29 brigades, 19 fighter squadrons, and storage depots enough to fight WWIII.
Sweden after acquiring a professional army: 1 brigade, maybe 5 fighter squadrons on a good day, and 1 field hospital, and ÖB going "We could maybe defend Stockholm for 1 week".

The Corparation wrote:I'm currently in the process of reading "When Computers Went to Sea" which is a history of US Navy computing and in particular NTDS. The author mentions briefly at one point a "Project CORNFIELD". The basic concept was that due to the size of computers at the time you wouldn't be able to fit two on every ship (You'd need two for redundancy in case a vacuum tube blew out at an inopportune time) and instead would need a dedicated "master ship" to carry a pair of navalized SAGE Derivatives in order to coordinate air defense for the battle group. As is fairly obvious the shrinking size of computers allowed for every ship to carry a computer and the project never went anywhere. The author provides two citations on CORNFIELD, one is behind a paywall that I'm loathe to get through and while I tracked down the other it didn't provide any additional information and didn't have any citations to follow. I'm wondering if anyone here has heard of CORNFIELD before and if so do they have any spare portions of asparagus they could share on it.

Husseinarti wrote:
The shortened model your talking about was shortened by 7 inches, this is based on the commando, which is shortened by a little over 3 inches.

Plus suppressors were used on the FAMAS, they fit over the muzzle break on the end of the grenade discharger, these do the same thing.

Triplebaconation wrote:

The Corparation wrote:I'm currently in the process of reading "When Computers Went to Sea" which is a history of US Navy computing and in particular NTDS. The author mentions briefly at one point a "Project CORNFIELD". The basic concept was that due to the size of computers at the time you wouldn't be able to fit two on every ship (You'd need two for redundancy in case a vacuum tube blew out at an inopportune time) and instead would need a dedicated "master ship" to carry a pair of navalized SAGE Derivatives in order to coordinate air defense for the battle group. As is fairly obvious the shrinking size of computers allowed for every ship to carry a computer and the project never went anywhere. The author provides two citations on CORNFIELD, one is behind a paywall that I'm loathe to get through and while I tracked down the other it didn't provide any additional information and didn't have any citations to follow. I'm wondering if anyone here has heard of CORNFIELD before and if so do they have any spare portions of asparagus they could share on it.

Cornfield was contracted out to the University of Illinois. The master ship would have been the aircraft carrier of a task force instead of Lensman-style command ship. It was really more of a systems concept than anything concrete - any software written for it (I'm not sure they got that far) ran on ILLIAC. The Cornfield team went on to use some of the ideas to develop PLATO.

For the Navy, Project CORNFIELD proposed a dedicated ship that would literally be a floating computer center, carrying two of the massive computers.

Manokan Republic wrote:

Spirit of Hope wrote:
There is basically no evidence to support the idea that conscription causes soldiers to be less motivated than a volunteer force. It is a common saying, but just because people say it doesn't make it true.

Note that WW1 and WW2 were fought by conscription on all sides. It is hard to argue any of the sides suffered moral problems because they were using conscription.



The main advantages are political and economic. Conscription generally saves money on low end soldiers, since they are forced to be there you don't have to pay them competitively to the open job market. However you also have to have the political will to enforce conscription, which can be hard in the face of unpopular wars or engagements. The nation's that still maintain conscription generally have the political will because they face existential threats, see South Korea and Israel.

Further consideration is that while conscription will fill out lower ranks there can be a struggle to get quality personnel to stick around and become NCOs. But that is a struggle a volunteer force can face as well.

A final consideration is how many people are being conscripted and how you are choosing them, all adults when they hit a certain age, only men, only a percentage of, etc.

Conscripts did far worse in combat than volunteers in WWII in general, and when professional units went up against conscripts it was generally a massacre, such as in the eastern front with the germans vs. the Soviet union. Most of the U.S. frontline infantry were volunteers in WWII and not, conscripts as well, as they generally didn't expect front-line troops to be successful if they were overly filled with conscripts.

The Corparation wrote:

Triplebaconation wrote:
Cornfield was contracted out to the University of Illinois. The master ship would have been the aircraft carrier of a task force instead of Lensman-style command ship. It was really more of a systems concept than anything concrete - any software written for it (I'm not sure they got that far) ran on ILLIAC. The Cornfield team went on to use some of the ideas to develop PLATO.

Have any readings on it? The author of "When Computers Went to Sea" mentions the University of Illinois connection however he seems to have thought that, at least at one point that they intended to have a purpose built ship, From Chapter 2, p69:

For the Navy, Project CORNFIELD proposed a dedicated ship that would literally be a floating computer center, carrying two of the massive computers.

To me at least a dedicated ship somewhat makes as the computers used for SAGE weighed on the order of a couple hundred tons and took up significant space. Multiply by 2 and it seems like you'd be hard pressed to fit the system on a carrier without axing most of the air wing.

The Manticoran Empire wrote:This actually false. 61.2% of US servicemen in World War II were draftees. In reality there was no appreciable difference between a conscript and a volunteer during the war. German and Soviet conscripts fought each other in Eastern Europe. British, French, and American conscripts fought German and Italian conscripts in Western and Southern Europe as well as North Africa.

Cossack Peoples wrote:What are y'all's opinions on command guidance for surface-to-air missiles?

Hrstrovokia wrote:Is the MiG-31 still a viable concept today?

Most countries have gone towards multi-role aircraft. Would a nation be better off going for a Su-27 or F-16 variant than something as costly and without the same branching path towards multiple capabilities as the MiG-31?

Cossack Peoples wrote:What are y'all's opinions on command guidance for surface-to-air missiles?

Austrasien wrote:

Hrstrovokia wrote:Is the MiG-31 still a viable concept today?

Most countries have gone towards multi-role aircraft. Would a nation be better off going for a Su-27 or F-16 variant than something as costly and without the same branching path towards multiple capabilities as the MiG-31?

No.

The Mig-31 wasn't known for its multiple capabilities. It could shoot AAMs and in principle drop bombs. It was an aircraft with a very narrow set of capabilities for a very specific mission - shoot down the XB-70 force. Since the XB-70 force notably didn't materialize its existence was rather questionable and was more about salvaging the big investment in the Mig-25 than the need for an aircraft that could fly very fast for about 20 minutes in a nearly straight line.

The PVO was putting SU-30s into service by the end of the USSR and Novator thought for a long time about adapting the R-37 missile for it, and phased array radars for ther Su-30/Su-27 were well underway. Had all the pieces come together the USSR could have fielded a very effective Su-30/R-37 combo with more or less all the valuable capabilities of the Mig-31 baring a sudden RB-71 force, which wasn't going to happen.