..."The development and
deployment of armed forces specifically
equipped and trained for COIN operations."
Right now, the US has too much of that. Wars against peer or near-peer enemies need less counter-insurgency operations and more heavy equipment.
The US has become used to operating in environments where air superiority was total, and secure base camps were possible. That's over.
The US Army takes this seriously. Read Parameters, the War College journal, which has many articles on this subject. Here are two.[1][2] It's a major argument within the US military.
There are some serious mismatches in preparation. The USMC has a great concept of a MAGTF - a Marine Air Ground Task Force, usually carried in an amphibious assault ship. This is great for COIN - the ship can go somewhere in a hurry, park offshore, and send out landing craft and air support, while acting as a mobile base. This works great against an enemy with nothing capable of attacking such a ship. Less well against an enemy with truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.
The Army has too many vehicles intended to resist improvised explosive devices, and not enough heavy artillery and tanks. The Army is also used to being able to set up rear area bases in the open, and fortified fire bases in hostile territory. Those now look like soft targets.
The USAF is used to being able to fly cargo planes such as C-130s into combat zones.
This now looks suicidal where everybody has anti-aircraft missiles. Today, if it flies over a combat zone, it had better be able to dodge, jam, and fight. Or be expendable, like a drone.
One of the lessons of the Ukraine war for the Navy is that you can't bring naval vessels near a hostile shore any more. Not since the Moskva.
That's something that's been around since the 1950s. Since a sub can't be expected to meaningfully recover a drone it launches, there's no functional difference between a 'drone' and a 'cruise missile' in this scenario.
Do cruise missiles have the ability to loiter very long before target acquisition? In my limited observation that has been one of the game changers in the war in Ukraine.
To me it looks like we’re rapidly nearing the point where we can target off of a shared coordinate system instead of painting targets or seeking RF/heat at which point the loitering munitions become much more useful even with small warheads.
Little loitering munitions like Switchblade don't have the range to be usefully fired from a sub; which wants to be hiding in deep water. Bigger UCAVs like Shahed or Bayraktar are essentially small ground-attack planes and behave like one, so if you're launching them from a sub what you're really making is a submarine aircraft carrier. All the evidence suggests that nobody wants a submarine aircraft carrier.
Take Bayraktar and try to fit it into a VLS cell so a sub can launch one: you first have to make the wings smaller because that wide lifting body won't fold up into the allowed diameter. But now that you've made the wings smaller, its optimal cruising speed is going to be higher, but you can't add a second engine or make the existing one bigger, so that means replacing the prop engine with a turbofan. And you've just designed Tomahawk.
I would be careful conflating the fate of the Moskva with the ability of the USN to survive an ASCM attack. The USN has been working on this particular issue since the 1960s. And the Moskva was an old, poorly maintained and poorly operated ship.
It's only in war that you truly find out what is poorly maintained or poorly operated. That said, the USN had multiple incidents of ramming other vessels down to basic failures in seamanship, so I'm not sure I'd be entirely as confident as you are..
The one fundamental thing we didn't account for is the willingness of a massive industrialized nation in the modern age to burn off young men like cordwood by the hundreds of thousands to achieve their war aims. Just about every last bit of military thought in the past 70 years needs to be thrown out and rewritten with that in mind, as it invalidates everything we hold as common sense and viable strategy.
Successfully waging an asymmetric war relies on the assumption that in a conflict of choice, the agressor can be inflicted enough pain to quit. The Soviet failures in Afghanistan, and the Americans in Vietnam, convinced the world of this fact. But that breaks down entirely when your agressor treats their own people as cattle for the slaughter, and has the viable means to maintain power regardless. We are entering a dark new age where the answer to "what would WWI look like with modern technology" is now being answered.
The conflict in Ukraine looks like WWI trench warfare because conflict in the air has been made impossible. By Ukraine having western anti-aircraft systems but also lacking a serious air force of its own.
So all that's left is just to hammer each other over the head with artillery and poke at each other with drones.
I am not convinced that other conflicts will look like this.
> The one fundamental thing we didn't account for is the willingness of a massive industrialized nation in the modern age to burn off young men like cordwood by the hundreds of thousands to achieve their war aims.
Classic Russian strategy. The USSR lost 20 million people in WWII.
>Classic Russian strategy. The USSR lost 20 million people in WWII.
They didn't have a choice. It was a war for their civilizational survival. If they surrendered to Germany, the Western part of the country would have been killed/enslaved, with the rump Eastern part carved up at Germany's leisure.
If they walk out of Ukraine, nothing happens except the killing stops.
>Classic Russian strategy. The USSR lost 20 million people in WWII.
Sure. But there was a sense that that was a relic of a bygone age. The role of Russian mothers helping to shame the CCCP into capitulation during Afghanistan is well known. We thought that people would never stand for that kind of bloodshed again.
You even see it still in the western response. "They can't keep this up", or "The people will overthrow Putin!". It's a total failure to comprehend that we are in fact facing an evil that the world has not seen in many generations.
They even sang Офицеры at the concert to open the "anti-fascist special military operation". Oh the irony:
I sing to the officers who took pity on the mothers
Я пою офицерам, матерей пожалевшим
By returning their living sons back to them
Возратив им обратно живых сыновей
Russia has held some amount of indirect control over those lands for hundreds of years. It cannot stomach the thought of losing dominance over them, and the presence of Russian speakers in those territories means that backing down would be seen as a complete betrayal. They'd rather burn it down and ruin it completely than lose control.
It is just a Russian propaganda. Russians mostly didn't give a shit what happens in Ukraine before 2014. There were internet armchair battles, but I never knew a single person who really thought that Russia had any claims on Ukrainian territory.
All this talk about history is no more than a central pillar of a Russian propaganda. It needs to justify what state is doing, it needs to find some moral grounds, and it uses history for that. And it is Russian history, which was rewritten for ~1k years each time when tsar changed. It never stopped. So to speak even in 1990s history was in a process of rewriting to show how bad USSR was. And now it is being rewritten to show that Russia didn't failed once, and all its fails are responsibility of "collective West".
Just don't listen when Russians talk about history, and you'll be fine.
> They'd rather burn it down and ruin it completely than lose control.
Yeah-yeah... Putin has no other choices left if he wants to die peacefully. There is a risk for him to end as Muammar Gaddafi did, if he loses this war. No one is happy elites included, give them one chance and they will play a spectacle of brutalizing Putin, freeing Russia from under a heel of a merciless dictator.
> It cannot stomach the thought of losing dominance over them
Historically, there is a reason for that. Those countries are used as a buffer against an invasion from Western Europe. US and EU officials have tried to convince Putin that this was no longer the case over the years, but he never bought it since NATO continued to expand despite Russian protests.
This is just ends in a circular argument because in the end NATO has expanded into the areas bordering Russia precisely because those countries (the Baltics, mainly) have a history of having their sovereignty violated by Russia, and continue to have serious and probably legitimate worries about that happening again.
So you have to ask exactly why Russia protests so strongly about NATO expanding? And why countries on Russia's borders were so eager to join it?
The only way Russia gets "invaded" by the "west" is by redefining its borders to include chunks of Ukraine... and now Ukraine defending itself and its internationally recognized borders is an "invasion" of "Russian sovereignty." Preposterous.
I agree with what you’ve written. Basically, Russia has used Eastern
Europe the same way China uses North Korea, Xinjiang, Tibet, and parts of Mongolia: as a defensive buffer. Im not trying to ignore that occupations by authoritarian regimes tend to not be nice. I’m just stating the cold logic of it. I totally also get why the Ukrainian people want to fight for their freedom from authoritarian corruption.
as for the larger “reason” it’s simply human nature. We’ve gotten better over the centuries, but game theory’s core idea is still in play.
the United States sold various resources (including tungsten for armor-piercing shells) to the fascists
Are you sure about this? My understanding is that the allies sought to limit availability of tungsten to Germany, given that Spain happened to have large deposits of the stuff.
Well, I'm quite willing to entertain this claim, but your response doesn't provide any details about who sold tungsten to Germany during this period. I don't want to go on a wild goose chase learning about the US tungsten industry of 80 years ago, nor learn Russian. If you could cite some specific companies that'd be great. As I pointed out, most of Germany's tungsten came from Spain, which has tungsten deposits in abundance.
Should you have enough time in the future, I could share with you also my monograph (currently in draft) on the long history of the current conflict Russia is involved in. Thousands of archival documents, links to sources etc. And the document is being composed in English, so I hope there won't be any problems reading it.
Forget D-Day, Hitler knew he'd lost at this point. No oil, no Blitz. As far as I can tell he kept hanging on because he believed (correctly) that the US and USSR would soon be enemies, and believed (incorrectly) that he could cut a side deal to join one side against the other.
Also, I'm not aware that Nazi Germany every seriously tried to ally with the Allies. They definitely did not have any interest with allying with the USSR, at least outside of divying up Poland between them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sunrise_(World_War_I... came close to a separate peace; I have a book I haven't finished about one of the negotiators, and it seems as if some sort of side deal might've been in progress but was blown up when soviet intelligence found out.
I don't have any strong evidence for this hypothesis; it's just the only one I've yet run across that (a) assumes Hitler to be rational*, but would still (b) explain how Hitler wound up in the bunker‡, when he'd already noted in his diary that Stalingrad meant his war plans (which had required not only Caucasian but also Iranian oil) were FUBAR.
If Hitler had been thinking the US and USSR were both interested in using the resources of the 3rd Reich against the other, he would have been correct: where he would've been wrong is in thinking he could cut a wholesale deal when they both wound up picking up most of what they wanted at retail.
* although after seeing Musk/TWTR play out, I'm a lot more open to the normally ludicrous idea that the top Nazis were a group of occult-addled meth-heads than I would've been 5 years ago...
‡ I had assumed Downfall (2004) had been based on an autobiography I'd read because the events depicted meshed so closely (despite my initial scepticism as to the reliability of my source), but oddly I find no mention of that book on either en. or de.wikipedia...
Your first link explores local forces in Northern Italy trying to organize a surrender. Not even remotely close to Nazi Germany as a country attempting to side with the Allies.
> Operation Sunrise (sometimes called the Berne incident) was a series of World War II secret negotiations from February to May 1945 between representatives of Nazi Germany and the United States to arrange a local surrender of German forces in northern Italy.[1] Most of the meetings took place in the vicinity of Bern, Switzerland, and the lead negotiators were Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff and American OSS agent Allen Dulles.
From what I can tell, this was done totally on the initiave of local commanders, not Hitler.
Agreed — but are there any other potential mechanisms that would explain how a rational Hitler —who had known that he failed to get Maikop and Grosny by Mar 1943 at the latest— would still have wound up in the bunker in Berlin in Apr 1945?
Sure. But he wasn't rational. My point remains, this:
> As far as I can tell he kept hanging on because he believed (correctly) that the US and USSR would soon be enemies, and believed (incorrectly) that he could cut a side deal to join one side against the other.
Yeah, you've convinced me that seems most likely. Forgive me for grasping at straws in an attempt to find a world where it was not necessarily true that a relatively small number of irrational people where able to inspire such devotion in an industrialised country that they were able to:
(a) get a convicted criminal into high office (1933)
(b) destroy democracy from within (1933)
(c) start a war of conquest (1939)
(d) discover they weren't going to win (1943), then
(e) double down, for another 640k of confirmed german military deaths
(roughly 1/3 total, so 50% of military losses they'd incurred before [d]?
I'd guess the civilian war deaths would skew much higher than earlier)
all while remaining in domestic control up until losing Berlin (1945)
Not to mention the Holocaust, of which the vast majority seems to have taken place during Case Blue (ie just before [d]).
An old jew dies and appears before G*d. "Nu," he says, "I have a joke for you".
"So tell it already," says G*d. The old man proceeds to tell a story of Babyn Yar. "And? that was supposed to be funny?" asks G*d. "Oy, for what did I think I could tell it properly?" sighs the old man, "I guess you had to have been there."
Not only that, but also there has been an order issued by Stalin NOT to kill the pilots of German spy planes, if\when caught, but to send them back safe and sound. That was happening due to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (first violated by the Nazis), and in order not to have any reason whatsoever to be invaded earlier than it actually happened.
I'm probably just being obtuse, but I fail to see how one justifies either "false" or lack of "equivalency"?
Hath not a gal eyes? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as their brother is? If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you expend them, do they not die?
(eg Lyudmila Pavlichenko's ~1'500 sister snipers who died fighting Nazis)
20 million vs a couple of thousand is not worth mentioning. At that point you should start mentioning the hundreds of sub Saharan Africans that fought with the Soviets.
These things take time. The Soviets held all the major cities in Afghanistan for 10 years. The Americans had a major presence in Vietnam for 9. World powers can certainly take a punch and keep going. Ukraine does not disprove the idea that at some point they'll throw in the towel.
Curious how this strategy updates now that drones make war even more asymmetric. A drone worth $100 can destroy a tank worth $1 million or a helicopter worth $10 millions. It's theorized that a drone swarm can sink an aircraft carrier group, which costs billions of dollars.
New technology used for war such as lasers or AI will only make war even more asymmetric.
So essentially, big-countries can't attack other big-countries because of nukes and MAD (mutually-assured-destruction). Big-countries can't attack small-countries because of asymmetric war. Small-countries can't attack big-countries for obvious reasons. So, the only war left is small-countries vs small-countries.
interesting that this was written in summer-2001, a bit before 9/11, which inspired one of the biggest asymmetric conflicts by the US. the power ratio was extremely skewed in US's favor, and yet resulted in a "forever war".
i'm curious how the author felt knowing that his paper would be so relevant only a few months after publication.
'Every time an international relations professor wishes that their work was ‘policy relevant,’ another stubby, desiccated digit uncurls on the monkey’s paw.'
It doesn't seem particularly relevant to modern conflicts where both sides resort to both direct and indirect strategies simultaneously as soon as they are available.
a fight to survive is not the same as a fight to achieve operational goals; a bunch of men trying not to die, when they see their colleagues doing the same, generally achieve that by not being at the front line at all
Right now, the US has too much of that. Wars against peer or near-peer enemies need less counter-insurgency operations and more heavy equipment.
The US has become used to operating in environments where air superiority was total, and secure base camps were possible. That's over.
The US Army takes this seriously. Read Parameters, the War College journal, which has many articles on this subject. Here are two.[1][2] It's a major argument within the US military.
There are some serious mismatches in preparation. The USMC has a great concept of a MAGTF - a Marine Air Ground Task Force, usually carried in an amphibious assault ship. This is great for COIN - the ship can go somewhere in a hurry, park offshore, and send out landing craft and air support, while acting as a mobile base. This works great against an enemy with nothing capable of attacking such a ship. Less well against an enemy with truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.
The Army has too many vehicles intended to resist improvised explosive devices, and not enough heavy artillery and tanks. The Army is also used to being able to set up rear area bases in the open, and fortified fire bases in hostile territory. Those now look like soft targets.
The USAF is used to being able to fly cargo planes such as C-130s into combat zones. This now looks suicidal where everybody has anti-aircraft missiles. Today, if it flies over a combat zone, it had better be able to dodge, jam, and fight. Or be expendable, like a drone.
One of the lessons of the Ukraine war for the Navy is that you can't bring naval vessels near a hostile shore any more. Not since the Moskva.
[1] https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol46/iss4/3/
[2] https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol47/iss1/13/