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by The Soodean Imperium » Thu Jun 08, 2017 2:05 pm
by Austrasien » Thu Jun 08, 2017 2:17 pm
The Akasha Colony wrote:Neo-Pontic Empire wrote:It also kills people, and fighting fewer people makes things easier. Especially once you consider thermobaric and incindiary munitions artillery really does help make assaulting a city easier. Besides it isn't like there aren't places to hide in an intact city.
Beyond that being willing to collapse major buildings means your soldiers don't have to spend three weeks fighting their way up the Burj Khalifa or whatever even larger buildings NS countries build.
Generally speaking, experience has shown this to not be true.
The number of people killed in an artillery bombardment of a reasonably dense city is quite low, certainly not worth the expenditure of ammunition for this purpose alone. And it creates a plethora of hiding spaces and basically barricades all the roads so mechanized advances grind to a halt, which is more beneficial to the defenders than it is to the attackers. This is why barricading the streets is usually the first order of business for a defender, regardless of whether they're a revolutionary rabble or a professional army.
No one is arguing that artillery is somehow not useful when assaulting an built-up environment, but "shelling it to level skyscrapers" is a waste of ammunition for no tactical gain. It is unlikely that skyscrapers would even be favored as a particularly good hiding space for a defending force; modern glass skyscrapers provide virtually zero protection or even concealment from enemy fire for troops trying to fight from inside the building.
by Purpelia » Thu Jun 08, 2017 2:31 pm
by Kazarogkai » Thu Jun 08, 2017 5:38 pm
The Akasha Colony wrote:Neo-Pontic Empire wrote:Conscription is a fairly new concept, the British didn't have conscription during the start of WW1 and their professional, motivated, and well drilled army made an excellent account of itself in the early battles of the war, not to mention the US never had peacetime conscription. Even then Britain didn't start conscription until 1916 and allowed it to lapse after 1920 up until 1939 where they attempted to have conscripts drafted into essentially the equivalent of the national guard rather than being full time soldiers (obviously WW2 scrapped those plans). I mean peace time conscription may be necessary depending on your strategic situation, but volunteer militaries are hardly a new concept created by neoliberals, especially in the Anglosphere where peacetime conscription was very rare.
Conscription in the United States started over a year before the United States entered WWII, when the nation was still at peace.
It's a much older practice in any event, and the modern incarnation of the system can be more or less directly traced back to the levée en masse of Revolutionary France in the 1790s. Oddly enough it happened to appear alongside the emergence of the second modern democracy in the Western world.
by The Soodean Imperium » Thu Jun 08, 2017 6:00 pm
Kazarogkai wrote:The Akasha Colony wrote:
Conscription in the United States started over a year before the United States entered WWII, when the nation was still at peace.
It's a much older practice in any event, and the modern incarnation of the system can be more or less directly traced back to the levée en masse of Revolutionary France in the 1790s. Oddly enough it happened to appear alongside the emergence of the second modern democracy in the Western world.
The various chinese dynasties were more or less doing it all the way back to the Qin Dynasty and maybe even before so there is that.
by Kazarogkai » Thu Jun 08, 2017 10:06 pm
The Soodean Imperium wrote:Kazarogkai wrote:
The various chinese dynasties were more or less doing it all the way back to the Qin Dynasty and maybe even before so there is that.
Hammurabi's Code, of the 18th Century BCE, referred to a system of conscription and peacetime service, and noted that the hiring of substitutes was already common. Coerced service broadly speaking probably predates the development of writing.
Though it should still be noted that modern conscription, of the kind pioneered by the French Levée en masse, was still a revolutionary development in and of itself, in that it made the requirement temporary and universal. Part of this had to do with France's own emerging nationalism, in that it made every citizen a soldier for the nation. But it was also enabled by the growth of powerful and wealthy states with the bureaucratic capacity to oversee such a system. Rounding up local peasants on an ad-hoc basis, or picking out a few people from each village and having them serve for 25 years, were both much simpler for pre-modern states to carry out, in spite of their obvious defects.
by Austrasien » Fri Jun 09, 2017 5:02 am
by Kazarogkai » Fri Jun 09, 2017 9:32 am
Allanea wrote:It's worth noting that 25-year service had its advantages. Namely superior training levels compared to most of the rabble European powers fought against in the Colonies.
Austrasien wrote:The main limitation of pre-modern conscription systems is they tended to net a lot, maybe even mostly, very low-quality manpower. If every village or block or clan or whatever has to send so many men with no expectation they will ever return, they won't be sending their best. The citizens-soldiers of classical antiquity were probably the best quality wise because the burden fell on the elite rather than the masses. But this obviously limited the amount of manpower available.
by United Earthlings » Fri Jun 09, 2017 3:49 pm
The Soodean Imperium wrote:Deprecation of knowledge not applicable outside the military is if anything an advantage from the military's point of view, as it makes that skilled technician more likely to sign up for a second four-year term as a volunteer.
The Soodean Imperium wrote:I'm less certain about whether the military should give university credit or scholarships after graduation. Given Menghe's level of development, the tertiary gross enrollment ratio is probably in the 50-60% range, and the Ministry of Education works very hard (probably too hard) to make sure these are the very best 50-60% of high school graduates. Having gone over the numbers again, probably only like 30% of HS graduates will get conscripted anyway, so I can maybe work in an exemption for students accepted to the top 20 universities, or those accepted with certain other scholarships, or something.
The Soodean Imperium wrote:TBH my other concern would be people who get put on the technical school track and then spend two years six months without seeing a lathe. Though I guess this is what maintenance and construction units are for?
The Soodean Imperium wrote:How does this work in RL volunteer militaries? i.e., if 50,000 incoming personnel choose "armored forces" when enlisting, but there are only 10,000 armored forces openings that year. Or if someone wants to be in signal troops but their pre-conscription examination suggested they would be very fit as front-line infantry.
The Soodean Imperium wrote:As I argued earlier, my main (OOC) objection to volunteer active forces and conscripted reserves is that it even if the reserve forces get the same basic training and refresher exercises under both systems, ex-conscript reserves will have the added benefit of having served in a similar role for two years. And based on my admittedly rudimentary knowledge, I can only assume this is enough to make a noticeable difference when the mobilization reserves are abruptly shipped off to their units and told to be ready for a massive conventional war in a week or less.
The Soodean Imperium wrote:"All volunteer-military" (or at least all-volunteer active troops with conscripted reserves) is something I may use as the "future prospects" section in writeups, something the Ministry of Defense is periodically debating and increasingly favorable toward but has not yet put into practice.
Neo-Pontic Empire wrote:Wouldn't not conscripting people give you a better moral high ground?
by Federated Kingdom of Prussia » Fri Jun 09, 2017 3:53 pm
by Austrasien » Fri Jun 09, 2017 4:15 pm
by Gallia- » Sat Jun 10, 2017 7:23 am
by Laritaia » Sat Jun 10, 2017 7:35 am
by Gallia- » Sat Jun 10, 2017 7:37 am
Laritaia wrote:we just need to use psyco surgery to implant a comprehensive array of battle maneuvers and procedures in the minds of every soldier so that he doesn't even need to think about what to do next.
it will just be instinct
by Gallia- » Sat Jun 10, 2017 7:44 am
by The Soodean Imperium » Sat Jun 10, 2017 12:17 pm
Federated Kingdom of Prussia wrote:Is this as big as they are saying it is? From what it sounds like all they did was jam the tankers' communications, and said tankers didn't know the plan well enough to stick to it.
by Gallia- » Sat Jun 10, 2017 12:22 pm
by Theodosiya » Sat Jun 10, 2017 12:36 pm
by Western Pacific Territories » Sat Jun 10, 2017 12:43 pm
by Austria-Bohemia-Hungary » Sat Jun 10, 2017 12:55 pm
Grenver wrote:Heh,Realism is for NERDS I always have my trusty piranha shooting piemaking dragon to ride
Gallia- wrote:Laritaia wrote:
no i mean implant it using electricity and science
It's just as effective to train soldiers to conduct battle drills prior to combat. Since most soldiers are reasonably intelligent and at least medium-quality humans given the end of universal conscription, it isn't particularly difficult for a person to understand what his job is in Battle Drill #24: React to Contact during HLZ Disembarkation. It's probably not much different than in Battle Drill #1, Battle Drill #4, etc.
Given it's SOP and stereotyped, it would be infinitely easier than the chaotic nonsense mess that the US Army (or any Anglo-American military) does. Which is really just "move 10 feet, radio for orders, move 10 feet, radio for orders" ad infinitum. Would have more creativity and variety than the brain-dead outsourcing of thought to higher command that happens now.
The only problem is it might require actually trusting the people next to you, which goes against the concepts of libertarianism that have taken root in Western mindsets in the past 30 years.
Anyway I wonder if it's possible for a radio-heavy army to ever learn how to undo that and start using standardized tactics. Did the USSR ever grow radios or whatever to the extent that USA or UK did in WW2?
by Gallia- » Sat Jun 10, 2017 1:14 pm
by Laritaia » Sat Jun 10, 2017 1:16 pm
Western Pacific Territories wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAOITDzehLo
Is Lindybeige still viable?
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