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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 3:40 am
by Ideal Britain
Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:lmao cant wait for the soldier's soviets, and aristocrats adorning lampposts.

most Sharifistani soldiers are good people they would never do such a thing.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 4:05 am
by Eukaryotic Cells
Altpeak wrote:Do man-packed .50 cal machine guns still have a place in a modern infantry battalion? In the context of a battalion machine gun platoon, the range and power of a .50 cal makes some sense but for the most part, it looks like how heavy they are and how little ammo the team would actually be able to carry for them negates those advantages that the larger caliber would bring to a leg infantry unit.

I think that it depends on the exact mix of weapons you have within the battalion, the role the battalion is intended to play in the larger doctrinal context, local factors like terrain, etc.

Users of .50 caliber machine guns in the role you describe are modernizing them, and are looking into lighter weight ammunition. Weight is a significant issue here, but on balance I think you should probably retain them. Their long effective range, useful effect against a variety of targets (personnel, vehicles, structures, area targets, point targets, and so on), and crew portability are all desirable characteristics.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 4:10 am
by Champagne Socialist Sharifistan
Are militaries of Muslim countries less casualty averse on average?

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 4:13 am
by Austria-Bohemia-Hungary
I wonder how many Soviet advisors tore their hair out over literally inbred buffoons the Arab states were appointing as officers.
Edit: The Arab Military Academy ladies and gents.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 4:36 am
by Purpelia
Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:I wonder how many Soviet advisors tore their hair out over literally inbred buffoons the Arab states were appointing as officers.
Edit: The Arab Military Academy ladies and gents.

Why should they care? A teacher teaches. If his students don't learn anything he still did his job. If anything dumb students are better because they don't ask so many questions.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 4:40 am
by Austria-Bohemia-Hungary
Purpelia wrote:
Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:I wonder how many Soviet advisors tore their hair out over literally inbred buffoons the Arab states were appointing as officers.
Edit: The Arab Military Academy ladies and gents.

Why should they care? A teacher teaches. If his students don't learn anything he still did his job. If anything dumb students are better because they don't ask so many questions.

Yes and then you get rekt by the Israelis not once, not twice, not even thrice but four times in a row. And then you get rekt by America.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 5:17 am
by Purpelia
Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:
Purpelia wrote:Why should they care? A teacher teaches. If his students don't learn anything he still did his job. If anything dumb students are better because they don't ask so many questions.

Yes and then you get rekt by the Israelis not once, not twice, not even thrice but four times in a row. And then you get rekt by America.

And how is that the teachers problem? Last time I checked they'd have gone back to the Soviet Union long before any of that mess happened.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 5:19 am
by Champagne Socialist Sharifistan
Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:
Purpelia wrote:Why should they care? A teacher teaches. If his students don't learn anything he still did his job. If anything dumb students are better because they don't ask so many questions.

Yes and then you get rekt by the Israelis not once, not twice, not even thrice but four times in a row. And then you get rekt by America.

Oh yes how tough Israel is.
If Israel was a man he’d be the guy who hides behind his girlfriend in a fight.

(Reference to the conscription of women)

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 5:21 am
by Eukaryotic Cells
Purpelia wrote:
Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:Yes and then you get rekt by the Israelis not once, not twice, not even thrice but four times in a row. And then you get rekt by America.

And how is that the teachers problem? Last time I checked they'd have gone back to the Soviet Union long before any of that mess happened.

I suppose it depends on your view of what a teacher's goals should be.

Are you teaching these people so that you can collect a paycheck and go home, or are you teaching them because you want them to actually learn something? At a higher level, what is the strategic mission of the organization that the teacher works for?

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 5:24 am
by The New California Republic
Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:
Purpelia wrote:Why should they care? A teacher teaches. If his students don't learn anything he still did his job. If anything dumb students are better because they don't ask so many questions.

Yes and then you get rekt by the Israelis not once, not twice, not even thrice but four times in a row. And then you get rekt by America.

Their air defence, and by their I mean Egypt and Syria, was a real mixed bag in terms of how competent they were. There were some total disasters such as Syria's abysmal use of the systems, and yet on the other hand Egypt eventually learned lessons from the commando raids and low altitude air attacks on their SAM sites by ringing them with AA guns, better concrete revetments, and a company of soldiers for ground defence, which the Israelis had real difficulty in knocking out.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 5:25 am
by Purpelia
Eukaryotic Cells wrote:I suppose it depends on your view of what a teacher's goals should be.

Are you teaching these people so that you can collect a paycheck and go home, or are you teaching them because you want them to actually learn something?

Remember the context here. These are military instructors that have been ordered to go to randomarabstan that they don't care about and probably couldn't point out on a map. Would you care?

At a higher level, what is the strategic mission of the organization that the teacher works for?

Who cares? As long as you get paid that's all that matters.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 5:30 am
by Gallia-
Purpelia wrote:
Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:Yes and then you get rekt by the Israelis not once, not twice, not even thrice but four times in a row. And then you get rekt by America.

And how is that the teachers problem? Last time I checked they'd have gone back to the Soviet Union long before any of that mess happened.


Bad teachers teaching bad ideas.

That said, Soviet advisors were mostly teaching mechanical maintenance and small unit battle drills, which don't matter much at all. Judging by the performance of the Syrian Army in the very opening stages of the civil war, these basic practices have been mostly ingrained, at least before the Soviet trained and subsequently trained troops were all killed or whatever. Any failures tended to be a result of the unique demographics and economic circumstances of the Arab-Israeli conflicts that weren't addressed by their leaders. Shazly's losses in Yom Kippur would probably not have mattered to a Soviet TVD because it would have another 10,000 tanks to throw into the fight and press the enemy with. In contrast, the much smaller Egyptian Army could be defeated entirely in a single decisive battle.

Soviet ideas were built around the idea of being able to just eat massive losses in manpower and machines in nuclear combat in Europe, while minimizing losses in the very specific circumstances that simply didn't apply outside of a rerun of WW2 where the initial attack is led by a huge alpha strike of fighter-bombers and nuclear missiles by the TVD's independent aviation and rocket artillery brigades.

When the Egyptians were attacking with their mechanized formations they acquitted themselves well enough, but when fighting defensively they were extremely inadequate, as they lacked entirely any sort of air cover. And of course, the contemporary Soviet solution to the Golan Heights would have been a mass nuclear barrage to break the defenders. Lacking both capacity for large air attacks (no planes) and nuclear weapons (no IRBMs), which are the two most important parts of what makes Soviet military equipment work adequately, the Arabs were more or less doomed to lose.

They were also probably genuinely stupider than Israelis and possibly fleeing a lot, but that's more of a Iraq 1991 thing than a Yom Kippur thing (or any Arab war, really). The traditional Arab method is more like "throw battalions at a problem until you find yourself out of battalions and the problem persists", because these countries are very little in demographic-economic size and Israel punches well above its weight in both aspects, possessing both nuclear weapons and substantial manpower-economic capacity. Blindly copying a superpower's ideas instead of forging ahead with your own ideas and thoughtforms is a problem shared between Arabs and Europeans, actually. Why put in all the effort of seriously analyzing your economic-demographic position and likely enemies when you can simply be dragged around/dominated by the thoughts and ideas of the nearest big country.

If the Soviets were good teachers they would have said "I'm not teaching you this, figure it out on your own" and moved on.

Then Egypt and Syria would have either been conquered by Israel or developed nuclear weapons and domestic tank production and conquered Israel.

Champagne Socialist Sharifistan wrote:
Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:Yes and then you get rekt by the Israelis not once, not twice, not even thrice but four times in a row. And then you get rekt by America.

Oh yes how tough Israel is.
If Israel was a man he’d be the guy who hides behind his girlfriend in a fight.

(Reference to the conscription of women)


kids these days be like "hippity hoppity female literacy is now illegal"

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 5:35 am
by The New California Republic
Purpelia wrote:[...] randomarabstan [...]

*Looks to see if that is a nation name on NS*

It's available if someone wants to grab it.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 5:47 am
by Eukaryotic Cells
Purpelia wrote:
Eukaryotic Cells wrote:I suppose it depends on your view of what a teacher's goals should be.

Are you teaching these people so that you can collect a paycheck and go home, or are you teaching them because you want them to actually learn something?

Remember the context here. These are military instructors that have been ordered to go to randomarabstan that they don't care about and probably couldn't point out on a map. Would you care?

At a higher level, what is the strategic mission of the organization that the teacher works for?

Who cares? As long as you get paid that's all that matters.

I mean, that's one point of view. If many people within your foreign internal defense/military instruction program have this sort of philosophy, the effectiveness of the program as a whole might be impacted. I suppose it depends upon the level of professionalism within the organization.

I'm not a military instructor or anything of the sort, but taking pride in your work and striving for excellence is an important part of being a professional, in my opinion.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 5:48 am
by Champagne Socialist Sharifistan
Purpelia wrote:
Eukaryotic Cells wrote:I suppose it depends on your view of what a teacher's goals should be.

Are you teaching these people so that you can collect a paycheck and go home, or are you teaching them because you want them to actually learn something?

Remember the context here. These are military instructors that have been ordered to go to randomarabstan that they don't care about and probably couldn't point out on a map. Would you care?

At a higher level, what is the strategic mission of the organization that the teacher works for?

Who cares? As long as you get paid that's all that matters.

So according to you “military personnel have no concept of duty”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 5:59 am
by Austria-Bohemia-Hungary
Eukaryotic Cells wrote:
Purpelia wrote:Remember the context here. These are military instructors that have been ordered to go to randomarabstan that they don't care about and probably couldn't point out on a map. Would you care?


Who cares? As long as you get paid that's all that matters.

I mean, that's one point of view. If many people within your foreign internal defense/military instruction program have this sort of philosophy, the effectiveness of the program as a whole might be impacted. I suppose it depends upon the level of professionalism within the organization.

I'm not a military instructor or anything of the sort, but taking pride in your work and striving for excellence is an important part of being a professional, in my opinion.

The Soviet instructors sent to the Middle East were probably pretty competent. The problem was that their students were culturally incapable of learning anything beyond rote memorisation.
So they learnt how to fix the tracks on a T-55 but failed to learn the whole how to war thing.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 6:02 am
by Gallia-
Eukaryotic Cells wrote:
Purpelia wrote:Remember the context here. These are military instructors that have been ordered to go to randomarabstan that they don't care about and probably couldn't point out on a map. Would you care?


Who cares? As long as you get paid that's all that matters.

I mean, that's one point of view. If many people within your foreign internal defense/military instruction program have this sort of philosophy, the effectiveness of the program as a whole might be impacted. I suppose it depends upon the level of professionalism within the organization.

I'm not a military instructor or anything of the sort, but taking pride in your work and striving for excellence is an important part of being a professional, in my opinion.


Purp is probably Welsh or something so he literally cannot conform to that philosophy.

Celtic races back to back migration losers.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 6:06 am
by Republic of Penguinian Astronautia
You sir, need a blog.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 6:13 am
by Austria-Bohemia-Hungary
And now onto something completely else (topic and all since it's more geopolitics and just war theory) since it's Aug 15th and all...
What if sanctions are acts of war? *thinking*

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 6:15 am
by Almadaria
Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:And now onto something completely else (topic and all since it's more geopolitics and just war theory) since it's Aug 15th and all...
What if sanctions are acts of war? *thinking*

Have we been fighting a legal/economic proxy war with Russia this entire time? Was the Cold War's end merely a lie, an illusion?

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 7:08 am
by The New California Republic
Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:The Soviet instructors sent to the Middle East were probably pretty competent. The problem was that their students were culturally incapable of learning anything beyond rote memorisation.

To be fair regarding what was said earlier about the SAM sites, it in all likelihood was the Soviet instructors that told them to make those modifications.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 8:16 am
by Ideal Britain
Gallia- wrote:
Purpelia wrote:And how is that the teachers problem? Last time I checked they'd have gone back to the Soviet Union long before any of that mess happened.


Bad teachers teaching bad ideas.

That said, Soviet advisors were mostly teaching mechanical maintenance and small unit battle drills, which don't matter much at all. Judging by the performance of the Syrian Army in the very opening stages of the civil war, these basic practices have been mostly ingrained, at least before the Soviet trained and subsequently trained troops were all killed or whatever. Any failures tended to be a result of the unique demographics and economic circumstances of the Arab-Israeli conflicts that weren't addressed by their leaders. Shazly's losses in Yom Kippur would probably not have mattered to a Soviet TVD because it would have another 10,000 tanks to throw into the fight and press the enemy with. In contrast, the much smaller Egyptian Army could be defeated entirely in a single decisive battle.

Soviet ideas were built around the idea of being able to just eat massive losses in manpower and machines in nuclear combat in Europe, while minimizing losses in the very specific circumstances that simply didn't apply outside of a rerun of WW2 where the initial attack is led by a huge alpha strike of fighter-bombers and nuclear missiles by the TVD's independent aviation and rocket artillery brigades.

When the Egyptians were attacking with their mechanized formations they acquitted themselves well enough, but when fighting defensively they were extremely inadequate, as they lacked entirely any sort of air cover. And of course, the contemporary Soviet solution to the Golan Heights would have been a mass nuclear barrage to break the defenders. Lacking both capacity for large air attacks (no planes) and nuclear weapons (no IRBMs), which are the two most important parts of what makes Soviet military equipment work adequately, the Arabs were more or less doomed to lose.

They were also probably genuinely stupider than Israelis and possibly fleeing a lot, but that's more of a Iraq 1991 thing than a Yom Kippur thing (or any Arab war, really). The traditional Arab method is more like "throw battalions at a problem until you find yourself out of battalions and the problem persists", because these countries are very little in demographic-economic size and Israel punches well above its weight in both aspects, possessing both nuclear weapons and substantial manpower-economic capacity. Blindly copying a superpower's ideas instead of forging ahead with your own ideas and thoughtforms is a problem shared between Arabs and Europeans, actually. Why put in all the effort of seriously analyzing your economic-demographic position and likely enemies when you can simply be dragged around/dominated by the thoughts and ideas of the nearest big country.

If the Soviets were good teachers they would have said "I'm not teaching you this, figure it out on your own" and moved on.

Then Egypt and Syria would have either been conquered by Israel or developed nuclear weapons and domestic tank production and conquered Israel.

Champagne Socialist Sharifistan wrote:Oh yes how tough Israel is.
If Israel was a man he’d be the guy who hides behind his girlfriend in a fight.

(Reference to the conscription of women)


kids these days be like "hippity hoppity female literacy is now illegal"

That's a strawman argument and you know it,there is obvious between teaching people to read and conscripting them.
Besides didn't you express opposition to women in the infantry.
Is this some kind of a joke? If so I do not realise how this is "funny".

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 9:31 am
by Barfleur
Sharifistan: Noooooo you can't just give women equal responsibility to serve in the army since they have equal rights as citizens! You're a cowardly girly man!
Israel: Hahaha merkava go brr

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 9:39 am
by New Vihenia
So i watched this :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8lyHMSBGOo

And i'm curious if there was ever an attempt to make a shipborne version of that Brennan Torpedo ?

PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 9:48 am
by Gallia-
Barfleur wrote:Sharifistan: Noooooo you can't just give women equal responsibility to serve in the army since they have equal rights as citizens! You're a cowardly girly man!
Israel: Hahaha merkava go brr


his magic lance can knock a man off his horse from 5,000 miles away

New Vihenia wrote:So i watched this :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8lyHMSBGOo

And i'm curious if there was ever an attempt to make a shipborne version of that Brennan Torpedo ?


seems like youd have issues controlling the thing since the wires might snap because the ship is pitching or rolling tbh

it was also really kind of slow

whitehead is probably better even if it isnt guided to target since a torpedo boat can release from much closer distance