Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. IV [Archive] - Page 7

Fhaolan

2007-04-10, 05:52 PM

I think it has to do with the increasing acceptance of the effectiveness of Linothorax, amongst other 'textile' armour types. The evidence for leather armour is predictably slim (given the survivability) and there is a huge (and endless) debate as to whether 'Musculata' was more generally made of iron, bronze, leather or 'other', which feeds into it.

*blink* Interesting. I've never run into the name 'Linothorax' before. Doing a quick web research shows up all sorts of interesting theories around it.

Still going on about leather armor: It doesn't surprise me that little leather armor survived, relative to 'textile' armors. From personal experience, leather deteriorates *fast* when it's exposed to blood, sweat, etc. Our stage combat group tends to go through two, three pairs of gloves per person every year. I found one glove over a year after it had been discarded by the owner because he had accidentally cut himself and bled inside the gloves. At the end of that time, it had dissolved into a shapeless, unidentifiable lump. You couldn't tell it had been a glove originally. Something to do with human body oils, blood, and sweat reacting with the tanning in the leather. Now, mind you this was modern tanned leather, which is usually chrome-tanned, not vegetable- or brain-tanned. Very likely there's a big difference, but it's worth noting.

Flax linen and the like seems to be far more durable in the long run, archeological-wise.

Mike_G

2007-04-10, 06:05 PM

I second that.

When I was a poor college fencer, practicing four or five nights a week, I used to wash my gloves with soap and water every week to get the sweat salt out of it, and then oil it to give it back some suppleness. Sweat eats leather alive, and I imagine blood does the same. I spent a lot of time doing maintenance because I was unwilling to buy three or four sets of gloves a season.

That would've eaten into my beer money.

The jackets, made of canvas, stood up much better to sweat, but were less protection than the leather.

Wehrkind

2007-04-10, 08:39 PM

Yea, sweat really makes it brittle. I know guys who claim that makes their armor stronger... It doesn't.

Chrome tanned leather is definitely poor for any rigorous use though. Veggy tanned is what I have experience with, not so much brain tanned. A good thick piece of veg. tanned leather can be really durable though. I use saddle skirting or sole leather for most of my armor making, and I have had pieces that required cutting with a jig saw to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. Waxing works really well for hardening then.
Experimenting a bit, I find that thick enough leather is decent protection against cuts, particularly if it is in a scale configuration that allows it to compress away from the slash a bit. Blunt trauma is excellently foiled (I was in the armor for that, and while I wouldn't want to suck up a 10 pound sledge, I don't have serious problems with anything lighter and sword like.) Peircing is so so; I found if I was not careful in point placement it could skip off curved surfaces, but once you got it stuck it was not terribly difficult to drive home. I suspect that is similar with cloth armors.

Definitely though, if you are working on any armors at home, make certain you get veggie tanned. Chrome practically disolves with use. Waxing is also important, as it water proofs it and keeps the sweat out, as does oiling if you need it flexible. I find sweat and water tend to make sections of leather under stress split into two pieces like sheets of paper.

I suppose it really came down to material availablity. A culture with plenty of cloth making but relatively few large mamals to get skin from (goat herding or sheep herding wouldn't do it) probably were more inclined to use cloth, while cultures with more cattle or game hunting would tend towards leather, I suppose.

Hades

2007-04-10, 09:00 PM

The thing with textile based armour is usually that it is layered an insane amount, let me see here...

And first they must have for the said Jacks, 30, or at least 25 folds of cloth and a stag's skin; those of 30, with the stag's skin, being the best cloth that has been worn and rendered flexible, is best for this purpose, and these Jacks should be made in four quarters. The sleeves should be as strong as the body, with the exception of the leather, and the arm-hole of the sleeve must be large, which arm-hole should be placed near the collar, not on the bone of the shoulder, that it may be broad under the armpit and full under the arm, sufficiently ample and large on the sides below. The collar should be like the rest of the Jack, but not too high behind, to allow room for the sallet. This Jack should be laced in front, and under the opening must be a hanging piece [porte piece] of the same strength as the Jack itself. Thus the Jack will be secure and easy, provided that there be a doublet [pourpoint] without sleeves or collar, of two folds of cloth, that shall be only four fingers broad on the shoulder; to which doublet shall be attached the chausses. Thus shall shall the wearer float, as it were, within his jack and be at his ease; for never have been seen half a dozen men killed by stabs or arrow wounds in such Jacks, particularly if they be troops accustomed to fighting.
-Ordinances of Louis XI of France (1461-1483)

This also provides an example of using a layer of leather on the outside, but still, 30 layers of cloth, linen especially, is nothing to be sneezed at.

Wehrkind

2007-04-10, 09:11 PM

God, that would be hot... I wouldn't mind getting some to try out though, even if it would be much more expensive than leather nowadays (oddly enough.)

Hades

2007-04-10, 09:24 PM

Heh, yes, but then so too would a layer (or two) of clothing, an arming doublet, some maille, plate on top of that, and then a maybe also a surcoat.

Wehrkind

2007-04-11, 01:37 AM

Yea, but that would stop all sorts of things cloth wouldn't :)
Plus, metal armor is not quite as hot as it would seem at first blush. Generally your body is warmer than the air around you, and holding in that heat is really what gets you. Mail breaths quite well, and even plate isn't too bad. (The helmets get stuffy though.) The problem is the layer of clothing and the doublet (and surcoat if applicable.) That 10-15 times over stikes me as really miserable. Better than dead though.

Hades

2007-04-11, 01:49 AM

Also true, but then again, it would be much more expensive as well.

Wehrkind

2007-04-11, 02:52 AM

Yea, I am just saying in comparing the fabric armor and the leather, the leather would seem to me to be a lot more comfortable. I do think that comfort would take a back seat to price and protection, availability being a large factor in the former.

Sundog

2007-04-11, 04:48 AM

Okay, lemme make this clear first. The only clan secrets I have are specialized weaponry and skills.

You'll know my specialty when you see it. All of you sword-weilders and other melee combatants, I'd be honored to duel you.

Anyway, back to the weapons...

I hear a quartz fillament fibrates fast when zapped...

So my curiocity is HOW DO I FUSE ONE INTO A SWORD!!! XD

I could put it on the sides... or... the back...

But I'd perfer the center if there's a way to do that without compromising the structural integrity...

Quartz filament is too delicate to cut through anthing. It would break before it started to slice.

What you need is a long filament of Buckytube. I wouldn't bother with a vibration system; instead, make the Buckytube into a loop and stretch it between two wheels, one powered. Should slice practically anything.

Neon Knight

2007-04-11, 06:35 AM

Exactly how powerful were elephant or express rifles? Could they literally blow limbs off?

Sundog

2007-04-11, 12:51 PM

Exactly how powerful were elephant or express rifles? Could they literally blow limbs off?

Oh yes, absolutely. Some of the more extreme examples reached the unbelievable .60 range in terms of calibre.

Consider: The "Brown Bess" musket, primary longarm of both sides during the American Revolution, was known for removing limbs and mangling those unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of it's fire. The Brown Bess used loose black powder, and had generally poor windage.

The final models of "Elephant Guns" used modern nitro-cellulose mix propellant, significantly more powerful, and near-perfect windage, in calibres such as .545 or .56. These weapons could not merely rip limbs off; in the few recorded cases of one being used on a human being, it is clear that they could rip a man in half.

Norsesmithy

2007-04-11, 02:42 PM

Firing a a .600 nitro express (7,600 lb feet of energy), .700 NE (8,900 lb feet of energy), .577 T-rex (10,000 lb feet of energy), or .585 Nyati (11,000 lbfeet of energy) is a brutal experience. That is less energy than the 14,000 lb feet of energy the .50 BMG that my Barret fires has, but my Barret is a military sniper rifle that weighs 10 kg without the scope and magazine and has a giant muzzle brake, while a sporting rifle in the dangerous game calibers will weigh around 4 kg, not have a muzzle break, and will hurt you when you fire.

The T-rex is the second most powerful of the rounds and if you go to http://www.accuratereloading.com/videos.html, and veiw the results of unprepared shooters trying the rifle for the first time, you will get some impression of how they feel when fired.

As for their impact on a target, I have no trouble beleiving stories about limbs being severed. I have seen what a .50 BMG does to a human target at 2000 meters, and a Nitro Express at 100-500 meters has more energy than the BMG has at that distance.

Speaking of being dismembered by gunfire, I used to work with a WWII veteran who comanded Stuart tanks in the battle to retake the Phillipines. He says that the the Japanese used suicide charges to try and plant satchel charges on the American tanks, and that when a human body is hit in center of mass by a 37mm ball round that the torsion rips the arms, legs, and head free of the torso.

Imagine that in a war movie.

Edit, Oh dear, it appears that none of their movies are working right now. They just showed people firing the rifle and dropping it or having it fly out of their hands and over their head. I am sure that suficiently skilled google-fu will get the videos off of another website if you really want to see them.

levi

2007-04-11, 05:44 PM

I'm curious about bows. I know a fair bit about the different sorts that have been invented, but I don't really know what the advantages of each sort are. I've assembled a list of factors that can go into describing all aspects of a bow, but I don't know what difference they really make. (All of my real life shooting has been modern compounds.)
Longbow vs Shortbow
Single Curve vs Recurve
Wooden vs Composite
Symetric vs Asymetric
Normal vs Compound
I know a few things of this sort, like that horse bows are short or asymetric, but mostly I'm in the dark. I assume most advances are for increasing power, but it seems that once you reach your max draw strength, there is no gain to be had in this department.

So what are the real advantages and disadvantages of each of these factors? Which can be combined, which have been, and which can't be? Also, when where they invented, particularly compound bows?

Fhaolan

2007-04-11, 06:20 PM

I'm not sure where to start on this one. :smallsmile:

I will say that the compound bow was invented in 1967 by Holless Wilbur Allen. There were several other archery bits and pieces invented in the 60's, including torque stabilizers, using fiberglass in composite bows and the like. There were apparantly several competing patents for compound bows in the late 60's, but Allen's design was considered superior.

In the terminology I'm familiar with there isn't such a thing as a 'shortbow'. There's horsebows, flatbows, longbows, recurve bows, and the Yumi (which in a category all on it's own), and probably some other's I've forgotten at the moment.

Let me see if I can go through your 'vs' bits.

Longbow vs Shortbow: The longer the 'arms' of the bow, the easier it is to make a heavier pull bow. Basically, you've got more room to 'spring'.

Single Curve vs Recurve: A recurve can have shorter 'arms' for the same pull as a single curve. Basically, you're compressing more 'spring' into the same space.

Wooden vs Composite: Wooden bows are quicker and easier to make than composites, providing you're going for a single curve. Composites are easier to make as recurves than wooden. Composites also mean you are using smaller amounts of each material, making you less dependant on finding that one wood stave with no imperfections.

Symetric vs Asymetric: This one is one I've only had a little experience with. Asymetric bows allow for much longer arms than symetric, because it can move a lot of that length 'above' you. However, that puts more weight above you which can make it less stable.

Normal vs Compound: This is a matter of physics. The pullies on a compound bow are set up to reduce the pull of the bow the farther you draw. Which means the bow is at say (random numbers here)... 60lb pull when at rest, but only 20lb when drawn. You can hold the arrow drawn at 20lbs much longer, but when the arrow is loosed, it has a 60lb draw pushing at the arrow just before it leaves the string.

SpiderBrigade

2007-04-11, 06:29 PM

ISingle Curve vs Recurve: A recurve can have shorter 'arms' for the same pull as a single curve. Basically, you're compressing more 'spring' into the same space.This is what I was thinking about when I imagined that they might be referring to a recurve-type longbow when they talk about it being "composite." That is, you can use it on horseback because the arms are proportionately shorter for the same power.

Of course this is all after-the-fact interpretation. Probably it's an oversight of some kind, really :smallwink:

Adlan

2007-04-12, 04:57 AM

Longbow by definition is about length, not power. It is entirely possible (though it would be very hard to make with traditional materials) to have a Short bow drawing in excess of 200lbs. A Longbow is, depending on your interpretation, over 5'6" or as long as the user is high.

There are so many different designs and materials for bows, even longbows are vastly different (the Yumi of Japan, the Englsih warbow, Indian Double curve's and the Massai's 9' bows are all considerd 'longbows') and Catagorising them is pointlessly simplified. I can't possibly list all the designs I've heard of or seen, there are so many weired and wonderful ones that the NFAS had a new classification, primitive style, for any bow with a design over 500 years old, that was so confusing and open to abuse that our club won't let it enter our shoots.

However, to answer your points:
Longbow vs Shortbow
The Longer the Bow, the easier it is to make, as imperfections matter less over all, and there is less stress on every square inch of the wood. A Longerbow pinches the fingers less, as the curve is not as tight.

Single Curve vs Recurve
It is to do with how the String pulls away from the bow, a recurve bow has a much smoother release because the string touchs the bow at more than one point, where as a single curve bow dosn't. this also stress the bow limbs less. Also, a Recuve tends to follow the string alot less, as when unstrung the curve forwards. This premade resistance to the string direction also means that a Recurve made of the same materials as a single curve will be of a higher draw weight.

Wooden vs Composite
The whole concept of Composite bows in D&D is flawed in the way it differentiates between Wooden and Nonwooden bows, I had a Self yew longbow, that would be interpreted as non composite, as it was made from a single yew stave. My current longbow is a laminate of Hickory and Dsenge, which makes it composite. However, My Yew bow was a much better material, and could be much more easily be made to a higher draw weight. Really, any bowmaterial can be made into a bow of any draw weight.

Symetric vs Asymetric
On this one I haven't a clue as to the proper advantages. However doing a little experimentation myself
*goes away to play with longbow, comes back*
Yeah, it just feels weird, and that was drawing a symetric bow asymetrically.
There are alot of myths about Yumi, which are the only asymetric bows i can think of, such as the bamboo they were made from weakes towards one end and so the must be asymetric to cope (bollocks, they are made of bamboo laminate, any halfdecent bowyer would simply alternate which end the bamboo ran.
One Story I have heard is that holding it furthur down is a better wrist posture, might be true.

Normal vs Compound
Another advantage is that the draw weight increases in a linear line, wheras with an ordinary bow it gets harder to draw by quadratics (Twice as hard, then twice as hard as that and so on). In NFAS and EFAA shoots compunds are also the only bows allowed Stabilisers sights and release aids, which means that an Average round for a Compund shoot might be 500, while an extraordinary round for a longbow shooter would be the same.
This is of course the whole idea, because the compund was developed for hunting as well as target archery (Target archery with a compund must be so Dull. The Olympics should go to IFAA rules and make everyone shoot bare bow at least.)

You technically can make a recurve non-composite bow, but it's *very* difficult and definately not worth the effort. It's just a lot easier to make a composite recurve.

Re: Adlan: There's worse than the D curve longbow for that. The flatbow's even simpler to make, has a worse cast, and tends to deteriorate fast.
I've made D curves, but it looks to me that a flatbow is harder to make, at least to make well, and especially the riser (handgrip). You also need a better bit of wood to make a Flatbow. I'm actually working on small one now, but none of the staves I have are straight enough grained.

A recurve bow essentially includes a "lever" in its design which gives you extra leverage to counteract the pull of the bow at full draw. The point during the draw where it's toughest to pull is just at the beginning; after that, the leverage reduces the necessary force. If you were to compare energy vs initial draw strength, a longbow would fare a lot better.

I find that a Recurve and a Longbow of equal draw weights, the longbow comes off worse in cast, the same, but less so with a flatbow.

There's another characteristic of bows which doesn't see play use that often: longevity. Bows have a limited lifespan (especially those mishandled by adventurers), and yew longbows fare very well there. I'm also not sure if you can make recurve bows that are as strong as longbows - there are longbows with 150# draw strength recovered from a shipwreck.
Make a Recurve big enough and you could make it the same draw weight as a Longbow, the problem would be the materials for it, and the weight, recuves are heavy. A modern Fibergalss laminate would probably be the best bet, but if it was the same size as my longbow (6'1") it would be very heavy indeed (5+lb)

The Warbows from the mary rose are the ones you mention, they were tested to destruction at a draw weight of 90lb, but thats after 400+ years of lieing in the bottom of the sea, replicas of them have draw weights between 100-250lb's.

Pocket lint

2007-04-12, 06:21 AM

Wooden vs Composite
The whole concept of Composite bows in D&D is flawed in the way it differentiates between Wooden and Nonwooden bows, I had a Self yew longbow, that would be interpreted as non composite, as it was made from a single yew stave. My current longbow is a laminate of Hickory and Dsenge, which makes it composite. However, My Yew bow was a much better material, and could be much more easily be made to a higher draw weight. Really, any bowmaterial can be made into a bow of any draw weight.
Yew is something of a "natural laminate", in that the heartwood has a high compression strength while the sapwood is at least decent in tensile strength. Perfect for D-bows, whose design generally puts more stress on the belly side. The ideal is to have something with high compression strength in the belly and something with high tensile strength in the back. In Scandinavia, the sami used to make decent laminated bows using fish glue to attach the layers. I'd reserve the term "composite" for bows that include a sizable portion of horn et al, i.e. recurve bows.

I've made D curves, but it looks to me that a flatbow is harder to make, at least to make well, and especially the riser (handgrip). You also need a better bit of wood to make a Flatbow. I'm actually working on small one now, but none of the staves I have are straight enough grained.
Oh? I thought it fairly easy, myself, but I was working with ash wood. Large, clear grain to guide your work.

The Warbows from the mary rose are the ones you mention, they were tested to destruction at a draw weight of 90lb, but thats after 400+ years of lieing in the bottom of the sea, replicas of them have draw weights between 100-250lb's.
Yup, those are the ones.
Some curious details: Archaeologists can usually see if a skeleton was an archer, since the repeated compression of the chest region frequently has distorted the skeleton. Another interesting thing is that hundred-year-war archers had personal nocks made from horn, which they attached to ready-made bows. If the bow broke (which happened now and then, they would remove the nocks, whittle down a new bow to the proper length and glue on the nocks. The nocks were often decoratively carved, to distinguish them.

Fhaolan

2007-04-12, 09:05 AM

I've made D curves, but it looks to me that a flatbow is harder to make, at least to make well, and especially the riser (handgrip). You also need a better bit of wood to make a Flatbow. I'm actually working on small one now, but none of the staves I have are straight enough grained.

It's the 'make well' bit, really. As long as you don't care about making it well, they're dead simple to make. :smallsmile:

Actually, the reason I say they're easier to make is that the one bowyer class I participated in over here started with the flatbow, and the D curve was for the advanced class (which I never managed to take). Personally, I find flatbows more forgiving for materials than D curves at first, but they do follow the string much faster.

For those trying to follow the terminology: Flatbows and D curves (also called longbows) are both types of 'Selfbow'. That means they are both made out a single piece of material, almost always wood. There is a third type of selfbow, called a roundbow, but nobody ever talks about them because they suck. :smallsmile: All three of these are named after the shape of the crosssection of the bow's stave. Roundbow staves have a circular crosssection, D bows have a crosssection with one side flat and the other rounded, and flatbows have two flat sides. There are all sorts of reasons for the different shapes, to do with wood under tension and compression, some woods like yew having properties as if it's a 'natural laminate', so on and so forth, but this post is already getting too long.

'Following the string' means that when you draw the bow, and release, the wood of the bow isn't completely springing back to the rest shape. It's slowly warping, as you're basically training the wood to be permanently bent in the drawn shape. Flatbows are particularly bad for this.

Adlan

2007-04-12, 02:53 PM

I did not know that, thanks for the info.

My mum worked on the mary rose, and though she was a textile assistant rather than working on the fun stuff. I do have some additional info on the skeletal problems of a Professional Archer (which is why I now shoot 50lb, rather than 90lb). The Left arm develops Bone spurs from the compression, especially around the wrist and elbow joints (these are actual deposits of calcium caused by stress on the bones).
Then the right arm gets wear from the muscle anchor points. This would be akin to rhumatism.

And then, they get a twisted spine into the bargin. Pay might be better than farm labour, but It ain't what I'd like to do for a living (I mean, a time travel accident I might end up that way, but otherwise...)

Concerning Yew, the sapwood is actually elastic, it's an awesome bow wood. I'm actually looking for a good boxwood stave to compare, because the old bowyers manuals (none of them written by bowyers of course) recommend Boxwood as the only wood comparable to yew for useage.

My current diffculty with making a bow is my own cheapness. I'm using scavanged rosewood. I'm from Norfolk, I'm ment to be flinty.

Winterking

2007-04-13, 04:03 PM

Part of the reason that the Yumi is asymmetric, I believe, is that it was also used as a horsebow. There are videos of Kyudo experts riding at a fast speed, drawing and loosing their bow with little or no difficulty, though the drawing technique is, of course different than with a normal longbow.

Fhaolan

2007-04-13, 04:53 PM

Just as an additional note about all those Kyudo Zen archery bows.

A starter Kyudo bow draws at around 25lbs. A modern Master's bow probably averages about 40lbs. The heaviest one I've ever heard of pulls at about 90lbs.

Compared to Western longbows: Starter bows usually draw at 30-40 lbs. An experienced archer is probably pulling about 60-80 lbs. The heaviest modern longbow I've heard of has a 200 lbs pull (World Record holder).

I'm not saying you can't make a Japanese-style bow with the same pull as a Western longbow, just that on average they do not build them as 'strong'. Now, perhaps Japanese-style bows have better cast, so they don't need to be as strong? I do know that Japanese bows loose differently, as I see the bow seem to flip around when loosed, which does not happen with a longbow. Perhaps that gives more cast?

Dancing_Zephyr

2007-04-13, 05:06 PM

Longbows are generally higher strength bows and therefore harder to use. A shortbow is easier to use but are generally less powerful.

Recurve bows just improve pull strength without increacing size.

Composite bows were used when wood wasn't in large supply, such as the mongolian bows, or when another material was much more common and easier to work with, such as bamboo in japan.

You can use an asymmetric longbow from a horse where as a symmetrical longbow would be too awkward.

Compound bows take the pull weight off the arm when the bow is drawn, so it becomes much easier to aim.

The yumi is a horsebow, so they needed a shorter bottom arm.

Khoran

2007-04-14, 11:37 AM

This will sound like an odd question, but here goes: What was the deciding factor it that did in heavily armored units? Rifles? Cannons? Some thrid factor I am unable to think of?

Mike_G

2007-04-14, 01:02 PM

This will sound like an odd question, but here goes: What was the deciding factor it that did in heavily armored units? Rifles? Cannons? Some thrid factor I am unable to think of?

No single factor did it.

One that you forgot is Cost.

Lightly armored Musketeers and Pikemen are much much cheaper to train and equip than heavily armored knights. If they can be as effective, then you are better off increasing you numbers of these troops and decreasing you expediture on heavy shock cavalry. My opinion is that this was the most important single factor. Why equip 50 knights if you can spend the same and equip 500 infantry who can dominate the field better?

Armor was protection against early firearms, so the appearance of the musket on the battlefield didn't, in and of itself, spell the end of armor. Breatsplates were worn by some units (but fewer and fewer as tome wnet on) through the Napoleonic wars, and only really disappeared for about 150 years, before returning as standard equipment for all soldiers.

Raum

2007-04-14, 01:17 PM

This will sound like an odd question, but here goes: What was the deciding factor it that did in heavily armored units? Rifles? Cannons? Some thrid factor I am unable to think of?I'm not sure it's correct to say "heavily armored units" have been done away with, but they have certainly changed. Today's heavy armor is a tank instead of a knight in plate. However, I'm guessing your question was more about body armor becoming less and less common as the gunpowder age progressed.

That change, while often attributed to penetration power of gunpowder weapons, probably had more to do with changes in military structure. Armies during this time changed from a feudal structure supported by powerful aristocrats to much larger armies drawn from the populace as a whole and fielded by the state. As such, the pure cost of equipping so many with custom armor would have been prohibitive. Additionally, these armies were wielded offensively in the field making logistics a priority.

I'm not trying to say gunpowder weapons weren't part of the reason, they were what allowed the state to create and train an effective armed force from the populace. But it was the numbers of men fielded that truly did away with heavy body armor.

On a side note, the US military has been in the process of moving back to using heavy body armor as they've streamlined into a smaller, more efficient force. It'll be interesting to see if that changes should current deployments force a notable expansion in force levels.

Adlan

2007-04-14, 03:30 PM

I have a question. I've heard modernt tank projectiles are akin to a high tech arrow, no longer do they have explosive heads. is this right, and how does it work?

AMX

2007-04-14, 04:58 PM

I have a question. I've heard modernt tank projectiles are akin to a high tech arrow, no longer do they have explosive heads. is this right,...
Essentially, yes; penetrating the armor of a modern tank requires a lot of energy focused on a very small area, and the only way to do that with a kinetic energy projectile is by making it long and thin (and fast, and heavy).
Such long, thin projectiles can not be stabilized by rotation, thus requiring fins, giving the appearance of an "arrow"; and they are decidedly unsuited for carrying any sort of payload.

...and how does it work?
Well, penetration happens as with any KE projectile, then secondary effects (spall, friction heating) do bad things to the stuff behind the armor.

That's just off the top of my head; if anybody complains, I can dig out Technology of Tanks and read up on the matter.

Dervag

2007-04-14, 06:48 PM

Armor was protection against early firearms, so the appearance of the musket on the battlefield didn't, in and of itself, spell the end of armor. Breatsplates were worn by some units (but fewer and fewer as tome wnet on) through the Napoleonic wars, and only really disappeared for about 150 years, before returning as standard equipment for all soldiers.Even as late as the American Civil War, suits of metal armor (or at least breastplates) were available commercially. Some soldiers bought them and used them, though usually not for very long. The armor might make you safer from bullets, but it also made all the other things a soldier needs to worry about (such as collapsing from exhaustion in the heat) a lot more dangerous.

Plate armor is really only an option for warriors who can afford to have servants dig the latrine trenches for them.

I have a question. I've heard modernt tank projectiles are akin to a high tech arrow, no longer do they have explosive heads. is this right, and how does it work?As soon as tanks were invented, it became very clear that normal bullets weren't going to cut it. The first response was to switch to steel-jacketed bullets that had at least some armor penetration, then to large-caliber antitank rifles similar to elephant guns (which could get a bigger slug going faster and therefore break more armor). The antitank rifles then gave way to small-bore cannon, medium-bore cannon, and finally large-bore cannon.

The problem is that blowing up an explosive charge against tank armor usually doesn't work very well. The blast of an artillery shell just reflects off the armor, leaving a big dent. So you need either a carefully shaped explosive charge to make a jet of plasma that will carve through the armor, or a big hunk of fast-moving metal that will punch right through it like a bullet through a metal filing cabinet.

Currently, big hunks of fast-moving metal are the preferred method. There are ways to design armor that make carefully shaped explosive charges less effective. There aren't a lot of ways to make fast-moving hunks of metal less effective except piling on even more armor.

13_CBS

2007-04-14, 07:36 PM

Don't HEAT shells also puncture armor effectively? Or was it a technology of bygone times?

Raum

2007-04-14, 07:44 PM

Heat shells were god against steel armor, but they're not nearly as effective against modern armor composites or reactive armors.

Dervag

2007-04-14, 11:37 PM

Don't HEAT shells also puncture armor effectively? Or was it a technology of bygone times?That's what I meant when I used the phrase "carefully shaped explosive charge."

As Raum observed, there are technologies that can defeat shaped charge attacks, as I indicated when I said "there are ways to design armor that makes carefully shaped explosive charges less effective."

Again, there isn't much you can do to defend against kinetic projectiles except build thicker armor, and we've already hit the upper limits of the amount of armor a tank can carry without becoming impossibly heavy. Whereas there are a lot of techniques for nerfing shaped charges fired at your armor without increasing its weight significantly.

Sundog

2007-04-15, 12:16 PM

The next generation of anti-tank weapons will likely be self-forging warhead weapons (such as the British SHAPE project, Self-forging High Angle of attack ProjectilE). Self-forging weapons have the advantage that they don't much care what angle they hit the target at - SABOT rounds tend to bounce if the hit too far from 90 degrees to the perpendicular.

Dervag

2007-04-15, 04:56 PM

Anyone know enough metallurgy to explain just what "self-forging" means?

Norsesmithy

2007-04-15, 05:48 PM

THe American Military also has a Self forger, the CBU-97 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBU-97) cluster bomb. There is also a version of the JSOW that used self forgers.

Because the projectile is semi molten, the intial impact is elastic, so it can't be deflected by sloped armor, it causes a shallow, but wide hole to form, until the force manages to defeat the rest of the armour, and then it pours through the armour, incinerating the inside of the tank.

The profile of the strike looks like one of those things you find at museums that you put coins into and they spin in circles until they go into the hole in the middle.

They detonate about 50-100 feet above the target, but would still be effective at 100 meters.

Edit: Forgot to say that they do this at 5000 miles an hour(at least the american version does), and it takes only a few miliseconds to defeat the amour.

Each CBU-97 fires 40 SKEET penetrators.

Wehrkind

2007-04-16, 01:01 AM

Interestingly to me (as a gamer) the US military is all over the place trying to find a good foil to classic HEAT projectiles for its troop transports. Most shoulder mounted rockets they are facing can apparently still punch through the armor on the STRIKER and other vehicles (Hummer's are kind of laughable, unless you know someone who has to use them, then you get mad.)
What interests me, and annoys me, is that they have moved from a stronger troop transport, the Bradley, to the lighter, and admitedly more agile, Hummer and now this STRIKER thing, but at the cost of protection. It bothers me since it seems that having an armored bunker to move in and retreat to is much more appealing than a quick vehicle that gets chewed up in cities. I may well be overselling the Bradley though.

Norsesmithy

2007-04-16, 01:40 AM

Well neither the STRYKER nor the HMMV are truly "troop transports."

The HMMV is a scout and utility vehicle, and the Stryker is a scout, patrol and assault craft, neither are intended to stand and fight when faced with hard contact.

Unfortunately, we aren't fighting a maneuver war against a mechanized army at the moment.

Having said that, yes, you are overstating the toughness of the Bradley, even though the Bradley is an abnormally tough APC (most APCs are about as tough as the Up-armoured HMMV, and are slightly more vulnerable than a STRYKER. Remember, most APCs cannot withstand AP ammunition in a 7.62x51 or 54R, much less heavy machine gun fire.

A bomb big enough to kill the GIs in a Stryker or HMMV will cause big trouble, and possibly even death to the soldiers in a Bradley.

Videos in Iraq show that baring an engine strike and being disabled in the streets, most of the crew will survive an RPG strike unharmed in the up armoured HMMV, and even the ones hit by the gas stream will generally be in OK shape after a short trip to Germany. It is the IEDs that are equivalent to 3 or more 155 artillery shells that cause American casualties. Most soldiers killed in RPG attacks were outside their vehicles when it happened.

With the RPG cage, strykers are expected to survive RPG 29 strikes, and those can knock out Merkervas, which are fine tanks, inferior only to the big 3 (Challenger, Leopard and Abrams).

Shaped charges are pretty easy to defeat, especially if they aren't top attackers.

Dervag

2007-04-16, 01:45 AM

Well neither the STRYKER nor the HMMV are truly "troop transports."If they aren't, then why do we keep using them as such? Why aren't we designing a new "troop transport" instead of the STRYKER?

Unfortunately, we aren't fighting a maneuver war against a mechanized army at the moment.And we are unlikely to do so in the near future, which makes it hard for me to understand the US military's persistent reluctance to invest in an armored car design more suitable for patrol work.

Remember, most APCs cannot withstand AP ammunition in a 7.64x51 or 54R, much less heavy machine gun fire.Ah, so the typical APC is only nominally A. I see.

Videos in Iraq show that baring an engine strike and being disabled in the streets, most of the crew will survive an RPG strike unharmed in the up armoured HMMV,Yeah, mobility kills will screw you over pretty much no matter what.

Norsesmithy

2007-04-16, 01:56 AM

If they aren't, then why do we keep using them as such? Why aren't we designing a new "troop transport" instead of the STRYKER?
What I had meant was the the Stryker wasn't a troop transport in the WH40K Rhino tradition. They are not meant to carry troops to a disembarkment location and stick around for a 4 hour set place battle. They are meant to be the calvary screen for an armour deployment, and when they find a target, the troops bail, fight for 10 to 15 with the Stryker laying supporting fire, or mortar fire, or anti-armor fire and get back in the Stryker, to head to the next fight.

If the fight takes longer than 5 minutes, the Abrams will show up.

Ah, so the typical APC is only nominally A. I see.
Well, no, they are armoured. Handgun rounds go through regular cars and trucks like they were made of crepe paper, to say nothing of an assault or battle rifle round or artillery fragments. I would much rather be in a BMP than a Ma Deuce, even if I own a rifle that can knock it out.

Storm Bringer

2007-04-16, 05:37 AM

Belkarseviltwin

2007-04-16, 09:47 AM

as to the why they don't build a armoured car for the fight they are facing, i think it's part inertia, part willful ignorance, and part because they see thier job as taking on other mechanised armies in field battles in some WW3 type enguagment.
The British Army have vehicles designed for counter-insurgency patrols in cities. It's called the Land Rover Wolf. It doesn't like IEDs.
The only armoured vehicles designed for what troops in Iraq are facing are the Merkava/Nammer- which are very slow, and cost the same as an MBT...

MeklorIlavator

2007-04-16, 11:39 AM

Fhaolan

2007-04-16, 12:17 PM

This is abit off topic, but I was wondering if there is any historical basis for any type of suglin[spelling?], the antlers-on-a-pole thats in frostburn. My friend swears by this thing, but I hate the image of it. Am I just being a bit biased against an uncommon but real weapon, or is it like the drowning rules in its impractiblity in real life?

Seems like a perfectly on-topic post for this thread to me. :)

Unfortunately, I don't have Frostburn so I don't actually know to what weapon you are referring. A quick Google doesn't show anything up, except for references to Frostburn and several instances of it being a surname of some kind from Northern Africa/Egypt.

Your description, and the Frostburn references I've found, of a gigantic antlers-on-a-pole thing, isn't promising. Antlers were used to make speartips and the like, but not whole antlers perched on the end of a stick.

Like a lot of oversized weapons, this probably falls into the category of; Yes, you could construct it, but it's truely not as impressive as you seem to think it is.

Adlan

2007-04-16, 01:39 PM

Antlers are fairly tough, but they would be about as effective as a wood equivilent. So from your discription, seems about as effective as attacking with a large, very point heavy coat hanger.

Fhaolan

2007-04-16, 03:07 PM

I've just run across another martial art weapon that I hadn't heard of before, and I thought I'd see if anyone here has any experience with it. The 'pyun kon'. From the descriptions it sounds like a kind of polearm flail, with an 8' long haft, and a shorter 'flail' end. Apparantly, there's a shorter horseman's version as well, with a similar name.

Anyone run into this one before?

Matthew

2007-04-16, 04:28 PM

Huh, no, I had never heard of that before. Appears to be Korean. Funnily enough, I have often wondered whether such a thing ever existed. Pretty much everything else got mounted on a staff as a Pole Arm (Daggers, Swords, Axes, Hammers, Picks, even Maces, or so I have heard), so it is not entirely surprising that it existed. I can't imagine it being particularly effective or easy to use, but this does put me in mind of the 'Orc Siege' illustration in the (A)D&D 2.0 Player's Hand Book, which features a Spear with a Flail hanging from it (a kind of Spear and Flail combination). Always struck me as a bit odd, but maybe this was the inspiration!

Subotei

2007-04-16, 05:02 PM

the thing is, to make a APC that can take full AT weapons fire, you end up something and big, heavy, expenisve and slow as a tank, but with a very small gun and troop transport ability.

APCs are built to be proof agianst small arms fire, to my knowledge.

as to the why they don't build a armoured car for the fight they are facing, i think it's part inertia, part willful ignorance, and part because they see thier job as taking on other mechanised armies in field battles in some WW3 type enguagment.

Hit the nail on the head there - you can't expect to take zero casualties driving through built up areas with civilians all over the place and complicated rules of engagement. Nor can you patrol in MBTs all the time because you chew up the roads/bridges/market stalls/kids you didn't see etc.

The US Army wasn't expecting to fight an insurgent/terrorist war in Iraq, and doesn't have the equipment to do so. No regular army is really equipped for this type of mission - the USSR failed in Afghanistan.

And also humans adapt and overcome obstacles - if insurgents can't kill troops when they're in their vehicles then their tactics will change to something else.

Norsesmithy

2007-04-16, 05:34 PM

the thing is, to make a APC that can take full AT weapons fire, you end up something and big, heavy, expenisve and slow as a tank, but with a very small gun and troop transport ability.

APCs are built to be proof agianst small arms fire, to my knowledge.

as to the why they don't build a armoured car for the fight they are facing, i think it's part inertia, part willful ignorance, and part because they see thier job as taking on other mechanised armies in field battles in some WW3 type enguagment.
If you ask me (as someone "well connected") why no armored car is being built to counteract this threat, the answer I would give you is if you don't consider the STYKER an armored car, and you aren't just looking for a HMMV equivalent with small arms protection don't hold your breath. Concepts have been tested and prototypes have been built, but really none of them have been shown to be able to do anything that an up armoured HMMV with a bigger transmission and a bigger engine couldn't already do, and the STRYKER is already filling that role.

Armored cars are a tried and tested formula, and they just aren't what we need. Other nations in the sandbox have fielded them (Armoured cars are a European mainstay), and they aren't any better than any equivalent American toy, not even better than the up armoured HMMV, because at least the HMMV can ram its way through a road block.

Frankly, a STRYKER with a 3 inch gun, RPG slats, bolt on reactive armor, and a push blade kit would be the best medicine.

Personal armor, and radio fuse jammers are a better investment of time, expertise and money.

Dervag

2007-04-16, 08:27 PM

Thank you for your input, oh blacksmith's shop of the northlands. I honestly didn't know whether or not armored cars would be more effective.

tiaxrulesall

2007-04-16, 08:40 PM

-i would second that, this page of the thread has actually been very enlightening and intensely relevant to our situation over in iraq.

Wehrkind

2007-04-16, 09:51 PM

That's sort of what bothers me about the Humvee. I really do expect some sort of Rhino type vehicle for the sorts of work they are doing over there.
Don't get me wrong, Hummers and Strykers are all well and good for the fast mobile part, and certainly are useful for scouting and lance work. The problem that I see is they rely on mobility for protection; as was mentioned above NOT sitting and fighting for a while, but moving out of the way when big things roll up.
The trouble I see with that is that in an insurgent sort of situation, one is going to be doing a lot more patrol/police type work, and running isn't an option. It would seem to me that being forced to fight in particular places (to hold and control them) for a period of time requires a heavy vehicle to retreat to when surprise ambushes occur while the direction and attitude of the enemy are ascertained.
It is interesting that many armored vehicles are not much better than the up-armored hummer or stryker. I suppose the shaped charges from ieds are just too difficult to deal with since they are extreme close range, and those are the real killers over there I am given to understand.

I suppose the main issue is going to come down to the rules of engagement and the total war solution of crushing the enemy down to the very last cell, collateral damage be damned. I doubt it would happen though, and perhaps for the best.

2007-04-17, 07:37 AM

I suppose the shaped charges from ieds are just too difficult to deal with since they are extreme close range, and those are the real killers over there I am given to understand.That and the RPG. Increased proliferation of the latter, to the point where Hezbollah is fielding the RPG-29, make "urban canyons" a veritable death-trap for any armoured vehicle caught standing still. Even the venerable RPG-7, currently challenging the AK-47 as most ubiquitous small arm, can be used to great effect against a lightly armoured vehicle.

Pocket lint

2007-04-17, 08:20 AM

Yeah, the touch AC on those APCs kinda sucks...

Wehrkind

2007-04-17, 09:31 PM

Even the venerable RPG-7, currently challenging the AK-47 as most ubiquitous small arm, can be used to great effect against a lightly armoured vehicle.
Which is precisely why I think they need heavily armored vehicles :)

I sometimes think the real hamstring of the US army is that they think too high tech when designing their equipment. The AK-47 vs the M16, for example. I think the beauty of simplicity and reliability often eludes them, an issue with applies both to their equipment research and their rules of engagement.

Raum

2007-04-17, 09:51 PM

The M16 isn't a bad weapon anymore. It did take a while to get there though. :/

As for the RoE, I'm not certain you can blame the military for that. I detest politics.

Norsesmithy

2007-04-17, 10:05 PM

The biggest issues with the early model M16s were ones of soldier training. The grunts going into Vietnam were told that the rifle never needed cleaning and weren't issued cleaning kits.

This caused trouble because the Army had ordered the rifles with unchromed barrels and had them chromed later by a third party, without reclearancing the chambers, and then switched the ammunition to a propellant that was known for being extremely dirty and gumming when it was humid.

So they had rifles full of gum with chambers that had insufficient clearance, and no gun brushes, oil, or other supplies to get them fixed.

Later manufacture rifles with reclearanced chambers and issued with cleaning kits were well received by most soldiers, but some of the conscripts were just so lazy that they didn't clean them anyways, and so the problem persisted to a lesser extent until they switched gunpowder.

It was a huge cluster**ck on every level except the original manufacturers.

Just a little copypasta on the M16

Zincorium

2007-04-17, 10:15 PM

Just a little copypasta on the M16

Right, now show an example of the AK-47 or it's derivatives failing disastrously under similar circumstances and you'll have a point worth making.

Forgetting that people will do stupid things with your gun and failing to compensate for that is a flaw of the manufacturer if not a manufacturing flaw. The M16 is not in fact self cleaning, and does require a good bit of lubrication and cleaning to function flawlessly. I'd like to think if the manufacturers (colt was the main one if I remember correctly) had actually spelled out in simple terms what was required of the average grunt, it wouldn't have been distributed to the people that it was.

Norsesmithy

2007-04-17, 10:51 PM

It doesn't matter that the AK 47 doesn't fail while utterly neglected. A soldier should never neglect his rifle. What matters is that the AK 47 was so inferior that the VC would abandon their missions to collect a single battlefield pick up M16.

A M16 is a better gun, the Special Forces soldiers that went to Vietnam ahead of the drafted troops felt this way, anyone not so doped up and lazy as to neglect to spend 5 minutes a night caring for the only thing between himself and a plane ride home in a black canvas bag feels that way.

The M16 fires a deadlier round more accurately, it feels better in your hand (anyone who has fired both a M16 or AR15 and an AK47 or clone thereof will tell you that as fun as they are, the AK 47 is a vastly inferior design when it comes to ergonomics), it has much better sights, it weighs less, its bullets weigh less, allowing you to carry many more, it is less prone to stove piping, it is less prone to extractor failure. The M16 is flat better.

Before my uncle went to the jungle, he had owned an AR 15, so he knew how to take care of the rifle, despite what McNamara said, and his service gun, a early manufacture gun with the chamber chrome problem never had a failure during either of his tours. Because my uncle knew how to maintain the gun, his platoon had the highest reliablilty rating in the division, because he showed the other grunts how.

The M16 was the very best of its generation of assault rifle, and the upgraded versions thereof are nearly as reliable (while being more accurate, except perhaps than the FN SCAR) than newer generation assault rifles currently undergoing their trial by fire in the armies of our allies.

An interesting tidbit, the G36, which is actually being claimed to be maintainance free, is proving to have the same issue with stoppages in the Afghani dust as the first gen M16 had in the vietnam slop if the soldiers don't clean it. Not to mention that a friend of mine in the Bundeswehr tells me that after an extended gunfight, he found that the zero of his rifle had changed, and that he had to resight in his gun, and that upon feild stripping he found that the polymer bold carrier rails had warped and looked "melty".

Dervag

2007-04-17, 11:26 PM

I sometimes think the real hamstring of the US army is that they think too high tech when designing their equipment. The AK-47 vs the M16, for example. I think the beauty of simplicity and reliability often eludes them, an issue with applies both to their equipment research and their rules of engagement.Nobody else does a much better job with their arsenal as a whole. The AK-47 was a genius design, granted; but most of the Soviets' more 'advanced' weapons systems had glaring technical flaws such as tank guns with autoloaders that occasionally chopped off the gunner's arm, tank turrets so cramped that the commander has to be less than five feet four inches tall and left-handed in order to operate the controls, and supersonic jets with protruding rivets.

It doesn't matter that the AK 47 doesn't fail while utterly neglected. A soldier should never neglect his rifle. What matters is that the AK 47 was so inferior that the VC would abandon their missions to collect a single battlefield pick up M16.I had heard, to the contrary, that the VC were issued specific written orders instructing them not to pick up M16s. Occasionally, such a written order would be captured by an American unit carrying M16s. That had to be embarrassing.

A M16 is a better gun, the Special Forces soldiers that went to Vietnam ahead of the drafted troops felt this way, anyone not so doped up and lazy as to neglect to spend 5 minutes a night caring for the only thing between himself and a plane ride home in a black canvas bag feels that way.Some of the first M16s issued were sent to Marines who, on the contrary, took very good care of the rifles, knowing very well that even if they were cared for perfectly they would frequently jam after firing one round or fail to fire at all. Here (http://www.jouster.com/articles30m1/index.html) is a link to the website of one Marine who wrote his own account of the trouble that the people on the ground had even getting the higher-ups to acknowledge that there were any issues with the M16.

Dismissing the negative and often lethal experiences of so many soldiers with M16s as the excuses of doped-up and incompetent draftees is an unjustifiable gesture of contempt.

The M16 is flat better.Out of curiosity, does this refer to the improved version of the weapon now in issue, or to the original model?

Wehrkind

2007-04-18, 12:02 AM

Nobody else does a much better job with their arsenal as a whole. The AK-47 was a genius design, granted; but most of the Soviets' more 'advanced' weapons systems had glaring technical flaws such as tank guns with autoloaders that occasionally chopped off the gunner's arm, tank turrets so cramped that the commander has to be less than five feet four inches tall and left-handed in order to operate the controls, and supersonic jets with protruding rivets.
I am not saying the Russians do a better job. Christ, it is a race between them and the Chinese to see who can give a damn about their soldiers the least. (SKS loaded with a CLIP?!)
However, whether we are the best or not, I think the infatuation with overly high tech force multipliers sometimes leads to using stop gap gear in situations where it is not appropriate for the missions because so much has been spent on it already.

Now, for AK-47 vs M16, I own an AK and have fired M16s, and honestly, I like the AK a bit better. Ergonomics are hardly relevant differences, at least for my size. I hardly notice the difference. I do notice that AKs will blow through 9" tree trunks like they are not there, while the AR15 rounds only sometimes make it through.
Come to think on it, I had a really interesting email from a soldier in Iraq to his father in my dad's gun club. He was listing the various weapons in use in Iraq, and how the guys thought of them. He was not terribly fond of the 9mms and the M16, prefering the .45 and... I don't recall ... I will have to see if I can find it. Might be a bit long to post though.

Norsesmithy

2007-04-18, 12:22 AM

...Out of curiosity, does this refer to the improved version of the weapon now in issue, or to the original model?
I don't mean to sound contemptuous, but it was the experience of all the Vietnam vets I knew personally that you could smell trouble on a recruit, based on his rifle, and that a good recruit who took perfunctory care of his rifle, especially one with a properly clearances chamber was going to have his rifle perform as needed.

Drug use was a huge, endemic problem in the Vietnam era American military, and my statements draw directly from anecdotes I was told by my uncle and his war buddies.

As for my claim that the M16 was a superior rifle,
I was referencing the rifles that were properly clearanced, preferably without the WC846, the M16A1 being superior to the M14, FAL, CETME, G3, and AK 47, and the A2 and A4 being superior to the Galil, AK-74, Famas, FNC, Type 81, AUG, SA80, and Sig 550.

Of course, while this is a deeply held opinion of mine, I have only had the fortune to operate the M16 (several variants), FAL, G3, M14, AK 47, AK 74, and FNC, and have significantly more experience with the M16/AR family of rifles.

Just recently, my grandfather, a few cousins, an uncle, and I put multiple thousands of rounds through a AR mechanically similar to a Vietnam era M16A1 without any stoppages in one day, no cleaning.

J_Muller

2007-04-18, 12:40 AM

And we are unlikely to do so in the near future, which makes it hard for me to understand the US military's persistent reluctance to invest in an armored car design more suitable for patrol work.

They have--it's in limited deployment in Iraq to see how it works and from what I know soldiers swear by it. It has decent armor, but more importantly it has a sloping bottom plate, increasing its ability to take mine and IED hits.

Also, the Army is funding the development of an anti-RPG system for humvees and other vehicles. How it works is, the vehicle gets equipped with a proximity radar. When an RPG shoots towards them, a box on top of the humvee shoots a small explosive charge, which detonates in the air, causing the RPG to explode relatively harmlessly a few feet away from the vehicle.

Neon Knight

2007-04-18, 06:29 AM

I don't mean to sound contemptuous, but it was the experience of all the Vietnam vets I knew personally that you could smell trouble on a recruit, based on his rifle, and that a good recruit who took perfunctory care of his rifle, especially one with a properly clearances chamber was going to have his rifle perform as needed.

Drug use was a huge, endemic problem in the Vietnam era American military, and my statements draw directly from anecdotes I was told by my uncle and his war buddies.

As for my claim that the M16 was a superior rifle,
I was referencing the rifles that were properly clearanced, preferably without the WC846, the M16A1 being superior to the M14, FAL, CETME, G3, and AK 47, and the A2 and A4 being superior to the Galil, AK-74, Famas, FNC, Type 81, AUG, SA80, and Sig 550.

Of course, while this is a deeply held opinion of mine, I have only had the fortune to operate the M16 (several variants), FAL, G3, M14, AK 47, AK 74, and FNC, and have significantly more experience with the M16/AR family of rifles.

Just recently, my grandfather, a few cousins, an uncle, and I put multiple thousands of rounds through a AR mechanically similar to a Vietnam era M16A1 without any stoppages in one day, no cleaning.

Where you shooting in a sandstorm after marching through one all day? Where you firing the weapon after a day in a moist jungle? Where you weapons cleaned in a prefect enviorment or in aforementioned jungle/sandstorm?

Equating range experience to military usage is a fallacy of the highest order.

When the XM16E1 reached Vietnam with U.S. troops in 1966, reports of jamming and malfunctions in combat immediately began to surface. Although the M14 had a chrome-lined barrel and chamber to resist corrosion in combat conditions (a danger learned from WWII Pacific theatre combat experience), the M16/XM16E1 had no chrome-lined bore or chamber. Several documented accounts of troops killed by enemy fire with jammed rifles broken-down for cleaning eventually brought a Congressional investigation. Later investigations also cast doubt on the veracity of the original 1962 reports of the alleged stopping effectiveness of the 5.56 mm bullet, as well as criticism of inadequate penetration (in comparison to the Soviet 7.62 x 39 mm round) when firing at enemy personnel through light cover.

The XM16E1 was soon modified to the M16A1 specification. The revised rifle was finally given a chrome-lined bore and chamber to eliminate corrosion and stuck cartridges, and the rifle's bore and recoil mechanism was re-designed to accommodate Army-issued 5.56 mm ammunition. Rifle cleaning tools and powder solvents/lubricants were issued. The Army ordered 840,000 of this version on February 28, 1967. Intensive training programs in weapons cleaning were instituted, and a comic book style manual was circulated among the troops to demonstrate proper maintenance. The reliability problems of the M16 diminished quickly, although the rifle's reputation continued to suffer. Moreover, complaints about the inadequate penetration and stopping power of the 5.56 mm cartridge persisted throughout the Vietnam conflict.

The AK-47 has always enjoyed a reputation of reliability. It is gas operated, using the gas from the barrel to push a piston attached to the bolt carrier, operating the action. The gas tube is fairly large and is visible above the barrel. The AK-47 is often built with generous tolerances, allowing it to function easily in a dirty environment.

The M16, though, had reliability issues in its initial deployment. The direct impingement gas system used by the M16 is similar to normal gas operation but with a few differences. Gas from the barrel is used to cycle the action but lacks the piston, so the gas alone impinges upon the bolt carrier. This design allows residue to be blown into the receiver as well as quickly accumulating carbon build-up within the gas port channel, negatively affecting reliability. The original M16 fared poorly in the humid, dirty environment of the Vietnamese jungle, due to a change in propellant not well tested beforehand. Part of the problem was the M16 was billed as self-cleaning, and cleaning kits were not issued. The infamous reliability problems were due to production errors and an arbitrary decision by the military to use a cartridge the rifle had not been designed to fire (the M16 was originally designed to fire the 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge as the AR 10; only after being redesigned for 5.56x45mm NATO did problems surface). In Vietnam, some American soldiers threw away their M16 rifles and used AK-47s from dead Vietnamese soldiers, with ammunition they captured, while others preferred the M14 because of its sturdy design and heavy firepower.

The problems became the target of a Congressional investigation. The results of the investigation found that:

1. The M16 was billed as self-cleaning when it was in fact not.
2. The rifle was issued to troops without cleaning kits or instruction on how to clean the rifle.
3. The rifle was tested and approved with the use of a Dupont IMR powder that was switched to a ball powder that increased both wear and fouling.
4. The lack of a chrome liner for the barrel and chamber created a corrosion problem and contributed to brass case swelling and extraction problems.
5. Lack of a forward assist rendered the rifle inoperable in combat when it jammed.

That doesn't sound like its' the grunts fault. That sounds like problems with the manufacturer and rifle design.

What years did you uncle and war buddies serve? Hm?

I've heard that the 5.56mm round is actually under eview due to poor killing performance. I believe it has some problem killing at ranges exceeding 100 meters due to a lose of velocity causing it not to fragment. If it doesn't fragment, its' small size means it doesn't do much damage.

The AK-47's 7.62 x 39mm round does have some fragmentation issues too. Specifically, it usually on fragments if it strikes bone. It is, however, a large round. Between the two, I'd take a 5.56mm shot over a 7.62 x 39mm round any day.

SpiderBrigade

2007-04-18, 06:30 AM

Just recently, my grandfather, a few cousins, an uncle, and I put multiple thousands of rounds through a AR mechanically similar to a Vietnam era M16A1 without any stoppages in one day, no cleaning.I'll bet that was modern ammunition though, yes? From my reading of the previous posts a big part of the problem was a specific propellant which gummed up when humid, therefore requiring more frequent cleaning.

Sundog

2007-04-18, 08:14 PM

I'll bet that was modern ammunition though, yes? From my reading of the previous posts a big part of the problem was a specific propellant which gummed up when humid, therefore requiring more frequent cleaning.

It wasn't even the humidity.

The M-16 was an excellently designed gun. The problem was that the incompetent f***-wits in the early 60's tried to then build said gun on the cheap.

Kasrkin mentioned the lack of chroming in the firing chamber, but they also used a cheap, dirty, gummy nitro-cellulose mix for their propellant. That damn stuff gunked up things REAL good, regardless of humidity. Add mud and a non-sealed action, and you can see why the original M-16 got a rep as a complete POS.

Once they got rid of the "bean-counter special" ammo and chromed the chambers, they got a very nice gun that has since been improved to being one of the best in the world.

Oh, and by the way: The AK-47 is not all that reliable. All that "dump it in mud, roll it in sand and fire off a clip" stuff is bull - an Uzi can do that, not an AK-47. The advantage of the AK-47 is that it's practically the easiest rifle on earth to maintain - no special tools required, uses almost no lube. But as far as jamming goes, the AK-47 will jam more often than the M-16 on average.

(Caveat: It does of course depend on where the AK-47 was made. Better manufacture will show through.)

Norsesmithy

2007-04-18, 11:01 PM

snip
If you read all of my posts on this tangent, you will find that I addressed all these points, and that I lay no blame on the soldiers in the tragic '64 to early '67 debacle. Instead I blame the pentagon acquisition men for ordering ammunition with WC846 (which is the dirty, gummy ball powder you speak of), the same pentagon acquisition men for ordering the rifle without the chromed barrels to save money, then when they were screamed at enough to realize that they should have gotten them with chromed barrels they had a third party chrome the barrels without reclearancing the chambers, aggravating the trouble caused by the WC846, then the same pentagon acquisition men for not issuing cleaning kits.

Only after the issuing of the reclearanced guns with cleaning kits in late February and early March of 1967 do I hold the draftees responsible, because it takes around 500 rounds of the dirty WC846 to make a jam likely, and the soldiers only carried 400 rounds of ammunition on their person, unless the were on a multi day patrol.

As for the Vets I know, and I use as my sources, one was my homeroom teacher in high school, he was a Marine that transferred to a unit that went over in June of '63 (as an "Advisor") and helped write the reports that were favorable to the M16; my uncle, who was an air cavalry corporal and then a Sergent, served one tour starting in '65 and another starting in '68.

As for the Ammunition we used in our little shoot, it was 30 year old Singaporean manufacture military surplus, I don't know the powder, but it was not WC846.

As for 5.56 failing to fragment after 100 yards, that is mildly baloney, as the issue people have is that, in the short barreled M4, it fails to reliably fragment at ranges of between 200 and 250 yards. In a full sized gun, like the M16 it will still fragment at over 500 yards.

As an aside, it seems that much of your text is taken from a wikipedia article that has several headers at the top complaining of unsited sources, biased information and needing the attention of an expert in the field. One of the stories disparaging the M16 that is told most often is clearly baloney is that marines in the feild were found dead with the cleaning rods jammed in the barrels of their M16s in a desparate attempt to clear jams. The reason why this is nonsence is that the dead marines, and the soldiers who reported this were never issue cleaning rods. Another clearly bunk claim is that many died because their M16E1s had no forward assist, when the M16E1 was the rifle that introduced the forward assist.

Just as a lot of people had political capital in resisting the adoption of the M16, many still have lots of capital tied up in discrediting the Plastic Fantastic, so you can't beleive everything you hear discrediting its ability as a combat rifle (although you still can't fire more than 1200 rounds though her in the sand).

Also the AK 47's reputation as reliable is similary unearned. Easy to maintain, yes, reliable, no.

Though I do support the adoption of 6.5 Grendel, because of its increased performance at ranges above 500 yards and its better penetration against body armour.

Dervag

2007-04-19, 01:40 AM

Neon Knight

2007-04-19, 05:58 AM

It wasn't even the humidity.

The M-16 was an excellently designed gun. The problem was that the incompetent f***-wits in the early 60's tried to then build said gun on the cheap.

Kasrkin mentioned the lack of chroming in the firing chamber, but they also used a cheap, dirty, gummy nitro-cellulose mix for their propellant. That damn stuff gunked up things REAL good, regardless of humidity. Add mud and a non-sealed action, and you can see why the original M-16 got a rep as a complete POS.

Once they got rid of the "bean-counter special" ammo and chromed the chambers, they got a very nice gun that has since been improved to being one of the best in the world.

Oh, and by the way: The AK-47 is not all that reliable. All that "dump it in mud, roll it in sand and fire off a clip" stuff is bull - an Uzi can do that, not an AK-47. The advantage of the AK-47 is that it's practically the easiest rifle on earth to maintain - no special tools required, uses almost no lube. But as far as jamming goes, the AK-47 will jam more often than the M-16 on average.

(Caveat: It does of course depend on where the AK-47 was made. Better manufacture will show through.)

...

This kinda goes contrary to most of what I've heard about the AK-47. It is a simple design. fewer moving parts than the M-16. Generous spaces between those parts. This combines to make the AK-47 hard to jam. In addition to being easy to clean. I've heard of the accuracy of the AK-47 degrading if it is not maintained, but If you could cite some sources, I'd be interested in reading them.

I've never heard of a Uzi doing that, either, but the Uzi is also a simple design, so it wouldn't surprise me.

As to my earlier post, the article I quoted does seem to have a couple of tags on it. I merely read the information, and missed the tags. As the content of the article agreed with everything I had been taught about the early M16, I merely quoted (technically copied/pasted) it to avoid typing all that out myself. I'm lazy. Sue me. Looking through the talk page and up for deletion history, it seems that half of wikipedia claims it was created with several editors, while the other half called it original research. Gee, I wasn't expecting that. Serves me right for not using another webpage.

I suppose this merely proves Newton's fictional fourth law of arguing. For every seemingly well-founded, fact based argument, there is an equal and opposite argument equally well-founded and fact based, claiming that the opposite is true. Or perhaps just a devil's advocate. Indecisive people, please run away. you will never be able to decide.

Where does this idea of the M-16 being an uber gun come form anyway? Its a good rifle, sure. Accurate, light. But there are more more accurate assault rifles, there are more reliable assault rifles, there are assault rifles firing a larger, more powerful round...

Where did all these people worshiping it come from anyway? Its a good assault rifle, but I wouldn't rate it among the best in the world. I wouldn't even try to rate them. There are too many factors. ROF, accuracy, weight, ergonomics, support of add ons, round, recoil characteristics...

Attempting to declare a weapon as the best or one of the best usually ends up as stupid wang comparison match; worthless, as any gun can kill somebody, and some guns are better at killing people in different situations. Why do we do this again?

(Btw dervag, thanks for the link. Interesting read)

Storm Bringer

2007-04-19, 08:38 AM

Subotei

2007-04-19, 05:19 PM

Thier worshipping it because it's in use by the US armed force.

I hope the US Army says their prayers every night, thanking God for the M16 and for not giving them the SA80 the British Army is using. It has a reputation as the most useless piece of kit, with a tendency to go off if dropped or knocked (cos that never happens in a combat zone). 20 years of repeated modifications costing millions and now it is just about usable - not by British special forces though - they get to choose what they want to fight with and wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SA80#Criticisms

http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,11816,1273304,00.html

lsfreak

2007-04-19, 05:46 PM

They need to adopt HK416 or HK417 chambered for 6.5 Grendel ;)
Interesting thing that I'm going to assume is right: the M16 design, and the entire 5.56mm round, was originally adopted for Air Force security teams and was never actually meant to be a rifle used in combat. Just security.
Also, the M16 rounds we're intended to fragment; in fact, from what I understand, if it was an intended effect it would have to be changed because of international law. But since it wasn't actually DESIGNED to fragment, it's okay that it does.

And maybe I heard wrong, but I assume there's a reason the US forces in Iraq pick up AK's whenever they can find decent ammo for them.

Sundog

2007-04-19, 06:02 PM

Uzis have an almost unearthly reliablility. It's a combinations of simple, reliable design and exceptional manufacturing quality. One warning, though - only use real, Israeli-made Uzis. Knock-offs, as always, can be dire.

The only major comparison I know of between the AK-47 and the M-16 was one by H&K. They did a big test of the major Assault Rifles. Reliability wise they got this:

M-16 - 1 Jam in 1000 rnds.
G-3 - 1 Jam in 1100 rnds.
AK-47 - 1 Jam in 800 rnds.
AK-74 - 1 Jam in 1000 rnds.
Steyr AUG - 1 Jam in 950 rnds.

Given the G3 is made by H&K, I would take that result with a grain of salt. Oh, and they discounted ammo-based jams - only actual weapon malfunctions were counted.

As to why I consider the current M-16 one of the best Assault Rifles in the world - well, in all honesty, there isn't that much competition. I rate it much higher than an AK-47, and marginally better than an AK-74 (fired both, the M-16's more accurate). I haven't fired a G-3, so I can't comment. Ditto on the SA-80, but everything I read says it's a disaster. The only weapon I'd consider markedly superior is the Steyr AUG - as or more accurate, and lighter and shorter due to the bullpup configuration.

Norsesmithy

2007-04-19, 06:05 PM

Norsesmithy, I would be much obliged if you would read this link:

http://www.jouster.com/articles30m1/index.html

It's really talking about the reliability issues of the initial issue of the XM16E1, but it confirms a lot of what Kasrkin was actually saying, from first-hand testimony.

It's not an easy read, I admit, but it's informative.
I have read it, back when it was a book in print. It came up in class on veterans day when I was a freshman, it was a source that my homeroom teacher took great exception to.

Mr. Culver had ties to men who had staked their political careers on the M14 and Springfeild Armoury back in the day, he isn't an unbiased source.

Besides, if you look at service records from back in the day, the M14 was <less> reliable than the M16.

I do not, and have never, disputed that the intial run of the XM16E1 was flawed. What I have disputed is that the flaws were so bad as to give it the reputation it has languished under for decades.

I know and trust the men who I draw my (albiet second hand) knowledge of Vietnam from, I do not trust Mr. Cullen.

Matthew

2007-04-19, 06:12 PM

Ohh, I have a Fire Arms question or two. Does the AK-47 feature a Burst Fire setting? How many Assault Rifles (generally speaking) have this feature?

Norsesmithy

2007-04-19, 06:35 PM

Well, I am pretty sure all of the newer assault rifles have burst fire, but the old AK doesn't.

Most are 3 round burst, but the newer Russian guns are 2 round bust.

Mike_G

2007-04-19, 06:37 PM

I have read it, back when it was a book in print. It came up in class on veterans day when I was a freshman, it was a source that my homeroom teacher took great exception to.

Mr. Culver had ties to men who had staked their political careers on the M14 and Springfeild Armoury back in the day, he isn't an unbiased source.

Besides, if you look at service records from back in the day, the M14 was <less> reliable than the M16.

I do not, and have never, disputed that the intial run of the XM16E1 was flawed. What I have disputed is that the flaws were so bad as to give it the reputation it has languished under for decades.

I know and trust the men who I draw my (albiet second hand) knowledge of Vietnam from, I do not trust Mr. Cullen.

The current M16's work fine. It's a good gun, now that we've had 40 years to improve it. The M16A2 I was issued in 1986 was a perfectly good gun.

I've heard a lot of horror stories of the early issue from decorated Marine snipers and Recon Marines (not known for ignoring their weapons) who documented it's tendency to jam, as well as the explanation of the whys and wherefores from a friend of mine who works building guns.

The M16 was rushed into service, and combat, before it was ready. The acquisitions of poor ammo and barels, and the assetion that it was "maintenance free" led to some disastrous situations in Vietnam.

The M14 was a perfectly good weapon, an there was no real pressing need to replace it, at least as quickly as they did replace it.

Read The Walking Dead by Craig Roberts, or A Sniper in the Arizona by John Cuthbertson, both infantry Marines who served part of their tours as snipers, or The Magnificent Bastards by Keith Nolan, about the battle of Dong Ha, where the vast majority of an entire battalion's rifles malfunctioned while fighting a pitched battle against an NVA regiment. It has a lot of interviews with Marines and with soldiers from the battalion sent in to help hold the line.

The gun was not ready for prime time. As far as continuing stigma, it's hard to live down a bad rep when squads of Marines get overrun and bayonetted with jammed rifles in their hands. A grunt's trust is hard to win back after that.

Norsesmithy

2007-04-19, 07:03 PM

Again, I acknowledge, and stated in my first post on the matter (if not with terribly great precision) that the early issue M16s were an unreliable design, if only for the cost cutting measures the Pentagon enacted contrary to and despite the advice of the manufacturers. What I am arguing instead, is that the M16E1s and M16A1s issued after the 28th of February, 1967 were a serviceable rifle, that would function reliably, given a 5 to 10 minute cleaning every night, and that even the rifles issued before that were capable of functioning properly, given (admittedly above average) care and maintenance (although the average soldier didn't have a good set of bronze brushes at home he could have his father mail out).

I have said this (or something like this) in every post I have made on the subject. Is my language that obfuscating that it isn't showing through?

Wehrkind

2007-04-19, 09:58 PM

I think the M16 does have it's fine points. It's tolerances are good enough to be accurate at range, more so than the AK is capable of. It just seems that it was not designed with really rugged uses such as jungle and desert in mind. That doesn't surprise me, given that the major wars up till then, and the expected wars there after, were fought in European, temerate environs.

Still, if I needed to put a round through a gnat's ass at 200 yards, I would pick the M16. If I needed to kill someone hiding behind a cinder block wall at 75 yards, I would want the AK.
Similarly, if I was going to be in some god forsaken wasteland of jungle or desert, I would want the AK, since in combat you can't really rely on being somewhere safe and secure every night. Depends on the mission, but when things really go down, chances are you are going to need a gun that is the least of your worries.

Dervag

2007-04-19, 10:13 PM

M-16 - 1 Jam in 1000 rnds.
G-3 - 1 Jam in 1100 rnds.
AK-47 - 1 Jam in 800 rnds.
AK-74 - 1 Jam in 1000 rnds.
Steyr AUG - 1 Jam in 950 rnds.Since the AK-47 is an out-of-date design, I don't think it really belongs on the list. All the others are close enough that there isn't a very important difference between the jam rates in my opinion, unless a jam in one of them is dramatically more difficult to clear than in one of the others.

I know and trust the men who I draw my (albiet second hand) knowledge of Vietnam from, I do not trust Mr. Cullen.OK, that's reasonable.

Personally, I think he may be exaggerating the problem, but I doubt that he made it up.

It's certainly true that the early versions of the M16 had a high failure rate in Vietnam. A lot of this was probably because many of the soldiers were not maintaining their weapons properly, and to the fact that Vietnam was more or less the worst possible environment for any automatic weapon.

I know quite well that they've resolved the M16's reliability problems by now. It is, after all, roughly forty years since the rifle was released.

If we're going to keep discussing this topic, maybe we'd better shift to a different approach to the question. How about the merits of the 5.56mm NATO ammunition relative to other assault rifle ammunition?

Stephen_E

2007-04-19, 10:42 PM

RE: APC's. You should keep in mind what APCs are. "Amoured Personal Carriers".
Not "Armoured Personal Combat Machines".

APCs are for the purpose of carrying troops quickly to the combat zone. Light armour means they can get closer to the battle zone without been killed by a stray round or HE burst. They have guns on them on the principle that if you have a machine near the combat zone you might as well put a mounted support weapon on it while you're about it. Never can tell what might come up. They simply aren't supposed to engage in battle.

Of course once you start doing that you get people who want to turn it into a barstardised tank that also carries troops. The result been that you have something that isn't as good as a tank, but you've managed to degrade its performance as a troop carrier. You also encourage troops to think of it as "protection" rather than "transport".

Re: RPGs. My understanding is that massed RPG fire have even achieved engine kills on Abrams, and once you've engine killed a tank in a hostile builtup envioriment it really becomes a place you don't want to be.

Re: Iraq/RoE and equipment.
The US Military is equiped and trained for open combat. After the initial invasion they were facing an occupation. If you use a army trained for Field Combat (even Peace-keeping training was disparaged by senior personal as "softening" the soldiers edge) for Occupation you're very likely to end up with an Insurgency (wrong reflexes, instincts and approach. You want an attitude closer to policing than soldiering). Think of it as like been given a F14 and been told to run a taxi service. RoE's weren't just a little off, they weren't even in the right county, and even when they were, the people been asked to use them had no experiance with in them. You can take a formula 1 driver and put him on a Mountain Bicycle, but don't expect him to win Mountain Bike races.

Stephen

Norsesmithy

2007-04-19, 10:53 PM

Re: RPGs. My understanding is that massed RPG fire have even achieved engine kills on Abrams, and once you've engine killed a tank in a hostile builtup envioriment it really becomes a place you don't want to be.

AFAIK, the purported engine kills on Abrams by RPGs were really misreported, and were actually mobility kills via IED, combined with the damage from using American missiles, such as the Maverick to ensure that no one could recover anything of value, from it, except the American military.

We have a habit of recovering the crew, whether alive, wounded or dead, from our armored vehicles, along with all the machine guns, and then blasting the hell out of it from the air, or another tank to ensure that it stays put until we can get a big force in there to protect the wrecker.

Stephen_E

2007-04-19, 10:57 PM

Still, if I needed to put a round through a gnat's ass at 200 yards, I would pick the M16. If I needed to kill someone hiding behind a cinder block wall at 75 yards, I would want the AK.
Similarly, if I was going to be in some god forsaken wasteland of jungle or desert, I would want the AK, since in combat you can't really rely on being somewhere safe and secure every night. Depends on the mission, but when things really go down, chances are you are going to need a gun that is the least of your worries.

My understanding is that this has a lot more to do with ammo. The 7mm rounds are much better for punching through cover and body armour. In Vietnam the M16 had the light rounds and aside from early jamming problems, was AFAIK oftened commented or, re the penetration problems. In Iraq the M16 has switched to the larger caliber and the AK to the lighter caliber, and the poor penetration reports have switched.

Re: grabbing the othersides weapons. There are many reasons for doing this. They range from opinions/preferences regarding the weapons abilities, to packrat/memorbillia, to more sordid/sensitive reasons (there will always be people in everyones forces, who would find it useful to have a weapon that is officailly "enemy").

Stephen

Norsesmithy

2007-04-20, 10:19 PM

Thier worshipping it because it's in use by the US armed force.

we are talking about the same PR machines that say the F15 has never been shot down (in air to air combat, at least. don't know about losses to SAMs), the M1 Abrams is nigh-on invunrable to fire from the front, up to and inculding US army issue sabot rounds, and the JDAM bomb has a CEP of 13 meters.
Well it isn't exactly the work of a PR machine if it is true.

As far as I have been able to determine, the only F15s ever lost in combat were two F15 Es that were shot down by AA gunfire while doing low level bombing. The M1 Abrams is very hard to kill, and in fact can resist the DU sabot rounds that we use, as evidenced by several point blank firings on disabled Abrams by other Abrams(American practice is to destroy a disabled tank, so that it can't be recovered and repaired by anyone but us). Heck, even the Maverick missile has trouble if it locks on in a frontal attack.

As for the JDAM, my buddies who have had to call them in say they are more accurate than they claim, scoring direct hits on truck sized targets.

Of course their are several places for erroneous data to get into the JDAM's targeting computer, chief among them incorrect coordinates called in by the grunts requesting the air strike (one of my buddies admits that he once called in an airstrike more than 20 yards off of the actual location of the cave he was aiming for).

BardicDuelist

2007-04-20, 10:32 PM

Could a suit of plate armor effectively stop a bullet (from guns of that era)?

Norsesmithy

2007-04-20, 10:44 PM

Yes, in fact many period suits were "proofed" by being shot at at very short ranged with firearms.

It is just that they were very, very, expensive, and so became less attractive for someone equiping an army to buy.

Dervag

2007-04-21, 02:10 AM

If you've seen pictures of the Spanish Conquistadores with their breastplates and high, brimmed helmets, you've seen a good example of the kind of armor that an armored soldier would be wearing in the late 1500s or early 1600s. Full plate became less popular during this period, but cavalry and officers kept wearing the breastplate for centuries.

Of course, many soldiers weren't armored or were armored in nothing but a thick buff coat made of many layers of cloth. Such a coat could turn sword blows and possibly even absorb the impact of a (very) low velocity bullet.

Belkarseviltwin

2007-04-21, 11:02 AM

Thier worshipping it because it's in use by the US armed force.

we are talking about the same PR machines that say the F15 has never been shot down (in air to air combat, at least. don't know about losses to SAMs), the M1 Abrams is nigh-on invunrable to fire from the front, up to and inculding US army issue sabot rounds, and the JDAM bomb has a CEP of 13 meters.

It is true that there has never been an air-to-air kill of an F-15 (apart from a friendly-fire incident involving two JASDF F-15s and an accidentally-launched Sidewinder). However, that is also true of many other combat aircraft (including the Tornado, Mirage 2000, etc). Also, the most advanced fighter aircraft ever engaged by an F-15 (apart from Serbian MiG-29s that had not been properly maintained and were malfunctioning due to lack of spare parts) was the Iraqi Mirage F1, which frst entered service several years before the F-15. F-15s have only ever been used where the enemy are either vastly outnumbered (as in Serbia) using superannuated aircraft (Syria/Lebanon) or both.

Storm Bringer

2007-04-21, 04:47 PM

gunpowder age breastplates were apprantly thicker than earlier ones, and could stop pistol shots at point blank (i.e. within a few yards) and musket balls at shortish range (they can stop the bullet at maybe 30+ from what my friends with the time, muskets and breastplates say.). Of coruse, both these figures are for the stopping the bullet, not stopping damge. you'd be looking at heavy bruising and such under the impact area.

also, the poor quality of the gunpower, the loose fit of the ball in the barrel and the higher recoil all negativly effected the peneration power of the bullet to vairable deggrees. sometime a shot would bounce off, other punch though.

What they told me was that full plate armour was just too costly to equip the increasingly large arimes of the time. as the armies grew, the armour shrank as the cost of equipping them exploded.

For example, at the relief of the siege of Orleans in 1429 in the 100 Years War, the armies of the british and french number about 5,000 and 10,000.

In 1631, At the Battle of Breitenfeld, in the 30 Years War , the armies were 35,000 on one side and 41,000 on the other.

in the 1815 hundred days campgain, the british, prussian and french armies were all over a 100,000 strong.

2007-04-21, 05:00 PM

What they told me was that full plate armour was just too costly to equip the increasingly large arimes of the time. as the armies grew, the armour shrank as the cost of equipping them exploded.Remember that no medieval army was ever fully equipped either with standard equipment or by the state/crown. Full plate was worn exclusively the mounted knight who was expected to provide it, along with his horse and other equipment, out of his own pocket.

As an aside on the numbers, the French had approx 30k soldiers at Crecy. This is considerably larger than most engagements in the HYW, a conflict that did not revolve around decisive battles, but then Breitenfeld is hardly representative of the TYW either. There was no great increase in army numbers until the Napoleonic concept of levee en masse. In fact you could easily argue that the establishment of standing armies at the end of the HYW actually lead to a decline in army sizes. I know of few post-medieval and pre-Napoleon armies that can march the Second Crusade for example.

Edit: Fixed it up. I really should proof read before posting

Wehrkind

2007-04-21, 09:35 PM

RE: APC's. You should keep in mind what APCs are. "Amoured Personal Carriers".
Not "Armoured Personal Combat Machines".

APCs are for the purpose of carrying troops quickly to the combat zone. Light armour means they can get closer to the battle zone without been killed by a stray round or HE burst. They have guns on them on the principle that if you have a machine near the combat zone you might as well put a mounted support weapon on it while you're about it. Never can tell what might come up. They simply aren't supposed to engage in battle.

Of course once you start doing that you get people who want to turn it into a barstardised tank that also carries troops. The result been that you have something that isn't as good as a tank, but you've managed to degrade its performance as a troop carrier. You also encourage troops to think of it as "protection" rather than "transport".

That's my point: "Troop transport" is not necessarily how they are being used, and thus they do not fit the bill.
The trouble lies in the nature of the fighting. There is not a "front" in the sense of "ok, over that hill, there are a bunch of guys contesting the ground." It is often "ok, in this city we are standing in, there are 15,000 people we shouldn't kill, and 200 we should." While an APC can serve admirably in the first case, moving troops quickly towards a front, letting them deploy and then scooting before the front moves to include them, when you are deploying in and amongst the "front", you don't have the choice to avoid combat. In such a case you do want a vehicle to consider protection, else you are required to hop out and dive for the nearest cellar for cover, abandoning the machine in the process.

Again, the issue is not that X won't work for a certain situation, it is that it won't work for current situations. When your rules of engagement are more restrictive than "kill whatever has a gun, an enemy uniform, or looks really threatening" you need protection, that invincibility of defense, to decide your actions.

Stephen_E

2007-04-22, 01:12 AM

That's my point: "Troop transport" is not necessarily how they are being used, and thus they do not fit the bill.
The trouble lies in the nature of the fighting. There is not a "front" in the sense of "ok, over that hill, there are a bunch of guys contesting the ground." It is often "ok, in this city we are standing in, there are 15,000 people we shouldn't kill, and 200 we should." While an APC can serve admirably in the first case, moving troops quickly towards a front, letting them deploy and then scooting before the front moves to include them, when you are deploying in and amongst the "front", you don't have the choice to avoid combat. In such a case you do want a vehicle to consider protection, else you are required to hop out and dive for the nearest cellar for cover, abandoning the machine in the process.

Again, the issue is not that X won't work for a certain situation, it is that it won't work for current situations. When your rules of engagement are more restrictive than "kill whatever has a gun, an enemy uniform, or looks really threatening" you need protection, that invincibility of defense, to decide your actions.

So what you want is an urban combat vehicle. You then have a choice, go the Humvee/Striker path, or go the Merkava 1 path (MBT set up to carry troop internally). You've made it fairly clear you aren't happy with the 1st, so that leaves you with the very expensive MBT route, which does street damage. Also note that they are situational dependant. i.e. outside a urban insurgency situation they aren't that great.

Actually in the situation you describe, where the vast bulk of the population are susposed to be left unharmed, you don't want them armed with any primarily leathal armoury. If you open up with normal vehicle mounted weaponry in a urban envioriment you're pretty much guaranteeing civilian kills. Hv Machineguns and cannons goe straight through civilian structures happily killing any civilians in those structures AND the next structure along. And before you say RoE, if you put soldiers under fire when they're equipped with automatic weapons, they will use those weapons regardless of RoE.

Stephen

Wehrkind

2007-04-22, 02:10 AM

J_Muller

2007-04-22, 02:13 AM

For the record, I am generally opposed to most RoE on principle. I think militaries should generally take a "Turn out the bad guys, or the town will be leveled in trying to root them out." approach. Other approaches seem more police/enforcement based, which does not match the pro-active nature of militaries.

That is, in fact, the most effective way to defeat an insurgency. However, it's not taken in most major insurgency situations, because the UN and the rest of the international community would object to the collateral damage.

Adlan

2007-04-22, 02:53 AM

Seems to me that that would be the best way to make the population hate you, I have no experiance or knowledge in this area, but if it happend to me, I'd be pissed off about it.

Any other opinions, or any sources on this one?

Zincorium

2007-04-22, 03:01 AM

As far as pissing off the population, that's nearly inevitable. The idea is that while there may be resentment, there is no armed resistance because while partisans/insurgents may be willing to die, the civilians are not willing to let their families die, and so don't shelter them. Other people in town will try to keep any who are outspoken from doing anything for fear of their own lives.

Frankly, any occupation is going to be problematic, the only way to guarantee that no one moves against you is to kill everyone at the beginning, and the backlash from that would be worse than any uprising or insurgency.

Wehrkind

2007-04-22, 03:55 AM

Well, the population loving you isn't very useful if they fear the enemy more. Machiavelli pretty much nailed it, in that you need to be able to convince them that it is in their absolute best interests to help you, since you will kill their enemies. If they don't want to help you, well, too bad, they just need to leave if they don't want to die.
You see similar issues in some neighborhoods in American cities, where the locals do not help their own police because they know the police will go home eventually, but the criminals will be back as soon as the cops leave. In that case, if the people don't help you, well, that's their problem when you get right down to it. The police are there to handle the enemy for the good of the locals.
If you are sending your military in, that implies you want the enemy taken care of whether the locals like it or not. In such a case your goal is to destroy the enemy in spite of the locals, not for them. Hence, if they don't help they need to be ignored, and if they are actively against you, they become the enemy.

Yea, it is ugly, but that is what war is. When bombing Berlin, the allied pilots did not worry how many consciencous objectors they set on fire, only that the enemy's ability to resist was eroded. (The fact that it didn't do much good is largely tangential. The bombing of Japan works just as well as an example.)

Wehrkind

2007-04-22, 04:08 AM

An interseting insight into this, which is getting kind of off topic I admit, is the interaction between staff and kids in a youth detention center (jail for kids.) My dad has been working in one for 40 years or so, and supervising one for about 15 of those.
There are a few tricks to it, but the salient ones are having strict and fair rules that are applied evenly, demonstration that you will punish those that break the rules without remorse, and that you will protect the kids from the other kids. The worst situations can arrise when the staff are not willing to crack down on kids who prey on the others, as their victims then have to decide whether to side with the criminals or staff, and usually it is an easy decision between staff who will punish you when you do wrong, and other criminals who will punish you because they feel like it.

Essentially the result of being at once strict, fair and terribly swift in punishment and protection is that the vast majority of the kids will actively support the staff, as they are the key to a reasonably pleasant life. As soon as the kids start to think the staff can not protect them, they immediately fall in with whatever nut case kids refuse to go along in any case, and cause problems they would not think to otherwise.

This is analogous to the insugency problem in that 80% of a population just wants to be safe and left to run their personal lives, and don't care much about what their government is like. Only 20% or less actively care and further take action to cause problems. The trouble is that the 80% will support whomever seems best able to provide/disrupt their goal, whether or not it makes sense from an ideal point, because when someone has a gun in your face, whether or not your government is elected makes little imediate difference.

In an attempt to stay on my topic and the topic of the thread... shivs can be made out of a plastic knife, a wood screw and some scotch tape. They are not, however, functional in the least.

2007-04-22, 05:39 AM

That is, in fact, the most effective way to defeat an insurgency.Actually its not. The British discovered that the key to defeating insurgencies was in the use of concentration camps that target the civilian population. The idea is that instead of simply levelling a village its inhabitants should be subjected to a brutalising process designed to break their collective while at the same time preventing them from aiding the fighters. See Kenya, Nyasaland and Malaysia.

Of course for a host of reasons this would be impractical today. Not least the fact that war is far more than a simple series of military clashes. War is waged for political goals and if these goals are not secured, despite successful performance on the battlefield, then the campaign is a failure. As such the RoE are a measure of control that politicians use to ensure that the military does not screw up their plans.

Adlan

2007-04-22, 07:26 AM

the RoE are a measure of control that politicians use to screw up the militarys plans.

Reorganised for truth.

2007-04-22, 07:37 AM

Reorganised for truth.Eh... no. The military exists to serve its political masters. It is the goals and plans of the latter that are important, the military is simply a tool used to accomplish these. The RoE merely outline what is and what isn't expected from the soldiers on the ground and defines military action within the scope of what is politically acceptable.

Stephen_E

2007-04-22, 08:17 AM

Your argument is hitting my ears as "You get an armored car, or you get a tank. There is no possibility of anything in between, and asking for anything else is insane."
I presume you don't actually mean that, but from your posts I can not seem to filter anything else out.
To restate my point for clarity: The Hummers and Strykers are good for a particular purpose, particularly getting troops to a front quickly, and perhaps lending some heavy fire support if needed, but otherwise avoiding combat like the plague. They are not good for the purpose they are increasingly getting put into, that of urban, close quarters combat, where there are no fronts defined enough to be avoided.

Surely, you don't want to ruin roads and infrastructure in a policing mission. That's a challenge. Packing weapons on a unit that can level city blocks is likely to cause problems. That's a challenge. Every problem ever related to warfare that vaguely applies. That's a challenge. It doesn't matter that there are challenges, as there are always challenges. The point is what they are using now is not the right tool for the job, and a combined arms force is predicated on the notion of using a variety of tools, so that you have the right tool for the job, and all those tools support each other.

For the record, I am generally opposed to most RoE on principle. I think militaries should generally take a "Turn out the bad guys, or the town will be leveled in trying to root them out." approach. Other approaches seem more police/enforcement based, which does not match the pro-active nature of militaries.

1st) Aside from not thinking "wanting something different is insane" you pretty much hit my views on the nail. I simply don't see any other option out there.

2nd) I think they do have the right tool for the job, by and large. Sure, the Humvees need the full mods to be the right tool, but essentailly they do the job. They move you around while giving decent visibility, and can cope with civilian roads in a urban area. Do they take casulties? Yes. If you think there is a solution that doesn't see you take casulties, then I think your optimism is drifting into the dreamland area.

3) As for how you think Insurgencies should be handled.

a) You'd be breaking the Geneva Conventions (correction:- You'd be breaking the Geneva Conventions vastly more than have been currently).

b) You'd make "victory" pretty much impossible. The problem with "ends justifies the means" approach is that the means can make the ends immpossible. Defeating the Insurgency isn't the "ends".

c) The Nazis did try exactly the methods you advocate. By and large they failed. They also got officiers convicted for war crimes. I won't claim they alwas fail. If you have enough troops, and are willing to be brutal enough, you can succeed. This is exactly what Saddam did. On the otherhand he did just get hung for it.

The best way to stop an insurgency is to nip it in the bud right at the start. Before they get a strong civilian back structure use a combination of political bribes, carefully targeted military action, and hearts and minds stuff to cut the support before it gets going. Part of this will often involve actually giving some of the things that the insurgent movement wants. Basically most people don't want to die, and won't put themselves on the firing line if you can put them in the posistion "I can get most of what I want without risking my neck".

Stephen

Cyborg Pirate

2007-04-22, 08:41 AM

1st) Aside from not thinking "wanting something different is insane" you pretty much hit my views on the nail. I simply don't see any other option out there.

No other option? How about the middle road? Battletank armour on a transport with only light weapons. Such a vehicle can act as protection and rolling cover for the troops without being weighted down with heavy weapons.

2007-04-22, 08:45 AM

Cyborg Pirate

2007-04-22, 09:04 AM

You've just described the Bradley :smallwink:

I'm thinking something a little bit bigger and a little more armoured that can survive ambushes by insurgents in street to street combat.

Stephen_E

2007-04-22, 09:12 AM

No other option? How about the middle road? Battletank armour on a transport with only light weapons. Such a vehicle can act as protection and rolling cover for the troops without being weighted down with heavy weapons.

Soryy Om, I disagree with your decription. TTBOMK the Bradley doesn't have MBT armour. Cyborg Pirate, you're describing a Merkava 1 with the maingun removed. That makes little difference to the cost and the wear-n-tear issues on urban envioriment roads. If you put MBT armour on a vehicle without a MBT chassis/engine your performance is likely to go down the crapper. When you're talking about doing Patrols, and that is what Humvees are getting used for, and taking casulties been used for, then frankly I think when you look at Price, Speed, Manuverability, Availability and Civilian Impact, you're better of with the modified Humvee. Sure, given 10+ years and a Trillion+ dollars you MIGHT be able to put all your patrols in something significantly better, but that's a longtime and a lot of money away.

Stephen

Threeshades

2007-04-22, 10:31 AM

Q. Has there ever existed and two-handed sword with a curved blade, like what is called a Falchion in D&D?
And if it did, where was it used, what was its purpose, and by what name is/was it referred to?

Matthew

2007-04-22, 10:43 AM

Stephen_E

2007-04-22, 11:03 AM

One thing to keep in mind when comparing something like the modified Humvee vs a Ungunned Merkava 1 is that you aren't making a straight comparison.

It isn't 1 Humvee vs 1 Merkava.

It's 1000 Humvees vs 50 Merkavas (I'm making a guess that a Merkava type vehicle will cost at least x50 a Modified Humvee. I suspect it may be worse than that). Basically which will be more effective, 1000 patrols in vehicles that are vunerable to serious fire, or 50 patrols that can shrug off all but the most powerful attacks. IMHO I can't see anyway the 1000 patrols won't be superior.

Stephen

Threeshades

2007-04-22, 11:10 AM

The Kriegmesser (http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/albion/nextgen/sword-kriegsmesser-knecht.htm), for one. Used in Germany in particular and Europe in general. It served pretty much the same purpose as any other Two Handed Sword.
http://www.albion-swords.com/images/swords/albion/nextGen/Knechtart.jpg

hmm. Yes that might count. but how about even stronger curved ones, like two-handed versions of arabian scimitars?

I mean such weapons as depicted here (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/ph35_gallery/PHB35_PG120_WEB.jpg).

Matthew

2007-04-22, 11:31 AM

Those are for the most part Fantasy Weapons. Few medieval historical Swords have very pronounced curves, as far as I am aware. I don't know of any examples of Two Handed 'Scimitars' with pronounced curves, but there is no reason that they might not have existed.

Raum

2007-04-22, 02:07 PM

Your argument is hitting my ears as "You get an armored car, or you get a tank. There is no possibility of anything in between, and asking for anything else is insane."Well, anything else is a compromise. You'll end up with something slower than an APC and less armored than an MBT...in other words, a target.

For the record, I am generally opposed to most RoE on principle. I think militaries should generally take a "Turn out the bad guys, or the town will be leveled in trying to root them out." approach. Other approaches seem more police/enforcement based, which does not match the pro-active nature of militaries.
That is, in fact, the most effective way to defeat an insurgency. However, it's not taken in most major insurgency situations, because the UN and the rest of the international community would object to the collateral damage.That hasn't worked anytime in the last two centuries that I'm aware of...in fact it generally increases support for the insurgency. Look at territories occupied by Germany in WW2 for an example. The Germans had a policy of killing at least 10 for every German killed. Yet it didn't stop the insurgency.
Actually its not. The British discovered that the key to defeating insurgencies was in the use of concentration camps that target the civilian population. The idea is that instead of simply levelling a village its inhabitants should be subjected to a brutalising process designed to break their collective while at the same time preventing them from aiding the fighters. See Kenya, Nyasaland and Malaysia.It's probably worth pointing out that the British started with good police work. When they detained people or confiscated cattle, it was for a reason. Even more telling, the British forces vastly outnumbered the Mau Mau. See the statistics for Kenya here:
The Mau Mau numbered 12,000 at their peak, with an estimated 20,000 passive supporters, but only 1,500 Mau Mau had weapons.
British forces in 1953 included:
· 10,000 British troops
· 21,000 police
· 25,000 Kikuyu Home Guard
Casualties for the Mau Mau were very heavy:
· 10,527 killed
· 2,633 captured
· 26,625 arrested
· 2,714 surrendered
· 50,000 passive supporters detained
In contrast, casualties caused by the Mau Mau were:
· 63 Europeans killed
· 534 Africans killed
· 1,826 African civilians killed
· 32 Europeans killed
For another successful counter-insurgency operation look at the Philippines after WW2. President Magsaysay and Col. Lansdale (an American advisor) marginalized, undermined, and then defeated the Huk insurgency.

Storm Bringer

2007-04-22, 02:14 PM

Well, the only two handed curved cutting swords i know of are the Japanese Katana and it's ilk, of which no more need be said. The Arabians didn't make an equivilent to the claymore/Zwilander in any numbers to my knowledge, though a lot of swords have grips big enough to use in a two-handed stance if you wished too.

Matthew

2007-04-22, 02:35 PM

Threeshades

2007-04-22, 02:50 PM

Matthew

2007-04-22, 03:06 PM

Well, you do get some odd shaped 'swords':

Types of Swords (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_swords)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Khopesh.jpg/300px-Khopesh.jpg

Khopesh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khopesh)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Falcata_%C3%ADbera_%28M.A.N._Madrid%29_01.jpg/800px-Falcata_%C3%ADbera_%28M.A.N._Madrid%29_01.jpg

Falcata (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcata)

I couldn't say for sure there was never a Sword like the one depicted in the D&D PHB as a Falchion.

In fact, the Chinese Dadao (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadao) looks rather a lot like it.

Dervag

2007-04-22, 11:50 PM

In an attempt to stay on my topic and the topic of the thread... shivs can be made out of a plastic knife, a wood screw and some scotch tape. They are not, however, functional in the least.Well, I imagine that a plastic knife blade won't be very effective or functional at any rate. They can barely saw through pre-cooked meat, after all.

As for counterinsurgency tactics, I'm not sure if there is a good way to counter insurgencies in the general case. Not all military problems have a good solution.

Sundog

2007-04-23, 02:37 AM

I posted this in another forum a little while back. I think it might be appropriate:

No. Not only the US. France, the UK and Russia as well.

How do you deal with an insurgency? The only example I know of where an insurgency was not successful was Malaya in the 50's/60's...and that failed because the the insurgents did not have the support of the populace and also that the insurgents made some very bad strategic decisions.

As Remote Observer said, Quintus Sertorius was probably the first successful anti-insurgency leader (or, at least, the first we know about). But there have been a number of others.

Malaya is, as you said, a bad example in some ways because the insurgents failed to gain popular support; but it should also be noted that they were well on their way to doing exactly that before the British commander (I have temporarily forgotten his name) began a very enlightened "Hearts and Minds" campaign, which both effectively countered insurgent propaganda and denied the insurgents access to the general populace.

President Fujimori of Peru not only defeated the Shining Path, he effectively destroyed both that organization and it's power base.

The Mahdi Uprising in the Sudan could be considered an insurgency, but I personally feel it was more of a conventional (if religiously motivated) war. Either way, the British crushed it quite thoroughly.

The uprising in the Phillippines post US acquisition was similarly annihilated.

The rules for fighting an insurgency are not hard to understand and simple to implement (though one should always recall the statement that even the simplest things in war become very difficult), to wit:

1: Do not allow insurgents a safe haven. If the insurgency has a place from which it can operate at will, train fresh troops and resupply and rest old ones, the insurgency will never end. You must deny them any safe haven, and refuse to allow them to "own" anything or anywhere. Never permit "nogo" areas to exist; if they develop, destroy them utterly.

2: Close the insurgents' lines of supply. If he can't get ammo, he can't shoot you with it. Kill his suppliers if possible, but at the least make it unprofitable. At that point most weapons dealers will go elsewhere

3: Seize the initiative. Patrol heavily, and especially in those areas most important to the insurgency. Attempt to engage at every possible opportunity. Remember: if he wasn't much weaker than you are, he'd be fighting you openly. You hold all the cards, so use them.

4: Hearts and Minds count. The populace will support an insurgency against you if two things coincide: first, they hate you and second, they don't fear you. So, make your choice, and make it right from the beginning, either bring them around to your way of thinking or make it really clear to everyone involved that fighting you is a losing proposition that will accomplish nothing but getting themselves killed. If you choose the second and go through with it, you'll still get a few die-hards who'll try you on for size, but not a popular uprising.

5: Ruthlessness is a virtue. An insurgent can be relied upon to be vicious and foul, an animal in human skin. He will follow no rules, and use any tactic, no matter how despicable, to gain even the slightest victory.
You must be equally ruthless. This is not to say that you must abandon your values and rules, but rather, that you must not shy from what must be done. For instance, if you capture a insurgent band, and they are not wearing identifiable uniforms, then they are not soldiers according to either the Geneva or Hague Conventions, and therefore need not be treated as such. Take some for interrogation, and hang the rest.
The rules of war are not a straightjacket. Know them, and know the exceptions. If insurgents are firing from inhabited buildings, destroy the buildings anyway - those using human shields are, by the laws of war, solely responsible for their deaths.

Those five rules aren't new. We knew about them in Vietnam. The US military's inability to apply them shows that at a high level, a political level, we are paralysed by sheer incompetence.

2007-04-23, 04:40 AM

It's probably worth pointing out that the British started with good police work. When they detained people or confiscated cattle, it was for a reason.Uggh. Someone needs to read up on the brutal "screening centres" operated by the British in Kenya during the early days of the state of emergency. The first reaction of the Colonial Office and police to discontent amongst the Kikuyu was to provide arms and official roles to the white settlers.

The reason that the British Army was able to defeat the Mau Mau was their success in cutting the insurgency off from the civilian population. By restricting them to the woods and starving them from supplies it was possible for Erskine to bring his numbers to bear on the isolated elements. This would have been impossible without the concurrent systematic internment of almost the entire Kikuyu population.

Again the emphasis lies in the camapign against the civilian population as much as the insurgents themselves.

Dervag

2007-04-23, 05:15 AM

Well, no campaign against insurgents can succeed while ignoring the civilian population; that much is obvious. Since the insurgents invariably rely heavily on the civilian population for recruits, concealment, and often for basic logistic needs, you can't fight them without doing something about their ties to the civilian population.

The simplest, but most brutal solution goes as follows:

If the enemy guerillas are like fish in the sea of the people, then drain the water. This will leave the guerillas high and dry, where they can be easily scooped up.

Of course, this basically requires large internment camps for most of the population of the nation in question, and you will very likely be hated and resented for a long time afterwards. It will work if you're thorough enough, but you might not be better off for the victory.

Alternatively, you can use psychological warfare to disconnect the people and the insurgents. As Sundog observes, to do this, you still have to display ruthlessness, because the people must be convinced that crossing you is at least as dangerous as crossing the insurgents. Otherwise, they will back the insurgents every time.

Ruthlessness does not mean adopting vicious tactics against the civilian population, such as shooting hostages in retaliation for insurgent attacks. It does mean demonstrating that the insurgents can't use your own legal codes against you and that you will fight and attack the insurgents no matter where they go or what they hide behind.

Stephen_E

2007-04-23, 07:19 AM

5: Ruthlessness is a virtue. An insurgent can be relied upon to be vicious and foul, an animal in human skin. He will follow no rules, and use any tactic, no matter how despicable, to gain even the slightest victory.
You must be equally ruthless. This is not to say that you must abandon your values and rules, but rather, that you must not shy from what must be done. For instance, if you capture a insurgent band, and they are not wearing identifiable uniforms, then they are not soldiers according to either the Geneva or Hague Conventions, and therefore need not be treated as such. Take some for interrogation, and hang the rest.
The rules of war are not a straightjacket. Know them, and know the exceptions. If insurgents are firing from inhabited buildings, destroy the buildings anyway - those using human shields are, by the laws of war, solely responsible for their deaths.

Those five rules aren't new. We knew about them in Vietnam. The US military's inability to apply them shows that at a high level, a political level, we are paralysed by sheer incompetence.

I don't have to much problem with your 1st 4 points, but this one comes of sounding like a propaganda broadcast.

1) Insurgents can no more be relied on to "be vicious and foul, an animal in human skin." than can regular soldiers. When someone starts using that sort of language the surest thing is that you're seeing someone with an axe to grind and a political view to spin.

2) It is not necessary for insurgents to be wearing uniforms to be entitled to POW status by the Geneva Conventions. It is only required that they bear their arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war (Geneva 3, Art 4). Also note that merely carrying a recognisable badge or other form of identification is sufficient to meet the term "Uniform".

3) Even if there is reason to not believe the captured people fit the requirements for been entitled to POW status, they're still fully entitled to POW status until judged otherwise by a Competent Tribunal. (Geneva 3, Art 5)

4) Insurgents fighting from a building that has civilians in it does not constitute "using them as human shields" under anything I've ever seen, but I'm happy to be shown otherwise if you can point to something that indicates otherwise. Basically if you blow up the building I'm not aware of the Geneva conventions laying down the law as to anyone been held responsible, beyond their own consciences (Although I won't claim that've I've read the entire Geneva Conventions and attacjhed works). In general the locals DO consider it to be the fault of "occupiers" rather than the insurgents.

In general using brutality and savagery (which IS what you're advocating) can supress an insurgency, but as others have pointed out, depending on the actual objectives, can cause you to lose. Defeating the insurgency is seldom a victory condition per se for the occupiers. I'd also note that the Brutality and Savagery path ("Ruthlessness" for spin purposes) will almost certainly result in war crimes that can come back to haunt those involved. Remember that Saddam kept control of Iraq for some 25 years using exactly the methods you adovcate, and got hung for his efforts.

Stephen

Sundog

2007-04-23, 08:22 AM

I don't have to much problem with your 1st 4 points, but this one comes of sounding like a propaganda broadcast.

1) Insurgents can no more be relied on to "be vicious and foul, an animal in human skin." than can regular soldiers. When someone starts using that sort of language the surest thing is that you're seeing someone with an axe to grind and a political view to spin.

I disagree. While I accept that I have used somewhat emotive language, my position is based on history and observation.

I have yet to see any instance of insurgents even attempting to hold by the Hague or Geneva conventions. Few, if any, have respected the inviolability of civilians; most, in fact, have reveled in the terrorising of civilians as a deliberate tactic of civil destabilization. They use murder, torture and starvation as a matter of course, and when they take POWs at all, they are rarely permitted to survive.

I think, all up, I can stand by my descriptors without guilt.

2) It is not necessary for insurgents to be wearing uniforms to be entitled to POW status by the Geneva Conventions. It is only required that they bear their arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war (Geneva 3, Art 4). Also note that merely carrying a recognisable badge or other form of identification is sufficient to meet the term "Uniform".

3) Even if there is reason to not believe the captured people fit the requirements for been entitled to POW status, they're still fully entitled to POW status until judged otherwise by a Competent Tribunal. (Geneva 3, Art 5)

A fair point. Bring them back, give them a fair hearing, and, if found guilty, hang them.

Ruthlessness does not, despite your statements to the contrary, mean brutality or lack of rule of law. It simply means not shying away from what needs to be done, no matter how distatsteful.

4) Insurgents fighting from a building that has civilians in it does not constitute "using them as human shields" under anything I've ever seen, but I'm happy to be shown otherwise if you can point to something that indicates otherwise. Basically if you blow up the building I'm not aware of the Geneva conventions laying down the law as to anyone been held responsible, beyond their own consciences (Although I won't claim that've I've read the entire Geneva Conventions and attacjhed works). In general the locals DO consider it to be the fault of "occupiers" rather than the insurgents.

This is covered in the Hague Convention on War. Those using Human Shields, which includes using civilian occupied buildings, are responsible for the welfare of any civlians endangered thereby.

Incidentally, some people will try to tell you that the Geneva Convention supersedes the Hague. They are incorrect; the two conventions complement each other. (I must admit, I'm more familiar with the Hague Convention, due to my Historical studies; it has a bigger effect on the macro level).

In general using brutality and savagery (which IS what you're advocating) can supress an insurgency, but as others have pointed out, depending on the actual objectives, can cause you to lose. Defeating the insurgency is seldom a victory condition per se for the occupiers. I'd also note that the Brutality and Savagery path ("Ruthlessness" for spin purposes) will almost certainly result in war crimes that can come back to haunt those involved. Remember that Saddam kept control of Iraq for some 25 years using exactly the methods you adovcate, and got hung for his efforts.

Stephen

As I noted, I do not equate ruthlessness with either brutality or savagery. A true army holds to it's ideals, and retains Rule of Law. But to be softhearted, or squeamish, will be seen to be weak; indeed, in an insurgency situation, it is to BE weak. If an opponent is not wearing any badge or sign or uniform, he is not a soldier; treat him appropriately. If they ARE wearing a uniform, then extend to them all the courtesies of a POW, and be punctilious regarding his rights; but do not let him go until the insurgency is over.
If you follow such a policy, not only with your enemies, but also with your own men (enforcing laws against rape, looting, mistreatment of civilians, etc.) you will improve your standing in the eyes of the civilians, and possibly encourage decent behaviour in your enemy.

Roethke

2007-04-23, 08:44 AM

Just a quick two cents,

Sundog, you seem to be succumbing to the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. If an insurgency is brutal by definition, and a "true army holds to its ideals", then of course you're correct. However, we're dealing with ostensibly 'real-world' situations.

Just a couple of 'well-behaved' insurgencies, (though they may not fit your definition, it seems to me that resorting to violence against superior force is the first step towards failure)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Solidarity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_revolution
The American Revolution (as taught in the US).
Even the contemporary accounts of the Indian War of Independance in 1857, are most probably exaggerated. Remember, both sides like to demonize each other

Fhaolan

2007-04-23, 10:00 AM

So there was none like that. And to answer what reason there should be not to make any of them (and the reason why i asked) is that a curved blade is effectively shorter (or much heavier) and that's why i didnt see much sense in making a two handed curved sword. So I asked if they actually existed, since they didnt make any sense to me.

*wanders back into the thread after having lost Internet for a few days*

Nearly all scimitars, falchions, and whatnot are one-handed. I think the most curved one every found was a shamshir.

There are no surviving examples of battle-used two-handed falchions/scimitars that I am aware of. However, there are period illustrations of such weapons. The one I was able to find on the Internet is 15th century.

http://www.thearma.org/arttalk/at7.htm

There are other illustrations, but I can't find ones on the web right now.

I do remember some examples of two-handed scimitars used for ceremonial and execution purposes, but they are very obviously not for battle. Most cultures had execution-only kinds of swords & axes, so this isn't that unusual.

Also, there's the Falx. This weapon was normally two-handed, and it was curved, but the curve goes the other way. It's basically a scythe blade, with the edge on the inside of the curve. I don't think this counts for what you're looking for though. :smallsmile:

Stephen_E

2007-04-23, 10:05 AM

I disagree. While I accept that I have used somewhat emotive language, my position is based on history and observation.

I have yet to see any instance of insurgents even attempting to hold by the Hague or Geneva conventions. Few, if any, have respected the inviolability of civilians; most, in fact, have reveled in the terrorising of civilians as a deliberate tactic of civil destabilization. They use murder, torture and starvation as a matter of course, and when they take POWs at all, they are rarely permitted to survive.

I think, all up, I can stand by my descriptors without guilt.

Sundog, Outside of peacekeeping few militaries respect the inviolability of Civilians (Dropping bombs and missiles on urban areas do not respect the inviolability of civilians), have much qualms about terrorising civilians as a deliberate tactic of civil deabalisation (aside from hitting urban areas with bombs and missiles having this affect generally, you might recall a campaign called "Shock and Awe". Such stategies and tactics are bread and butter for militaries, especially if they're trying to keep their own casulties down).Murder, torture and cutting of food and water to civilian areas deemed to be "Insurgent Strongholds" is endemic amongst militaies fighting insurgents in the case of the 1st two, and a common tactic in the latter case. All 3 have been done by both US and Iraqi Govt forces in Iraq, and before anyone accuses me of pointing fingers, this behaviour can be found in most militaries fighting insurgencies.

In general Insurgecies have little capacity to hold POWs, so unless the force they're fighting are willing to set up some sort of parole system Insurgents have limited unpalatable choices. But it should be noted that the Militaries treatment of Insurgent prisoners is often quite poor as well. Your own comments make the point how quickly they try and deny insurgents as having any rights, and been free targets for summary execution and interogation (which ussually reads as torture).

I replaced your term "Ruthlessness" with "Brutality and Savagery" because a) when people use the descriptors you used regarding insurgents, then "Brutality and Savagery" is generally exactly what occurs under the cover of "Ruthlessness", b) the behaviour you were advocating is at the very least on the edge of "Brutality and Savagery", and c) examples, both current and historical, indicate thatwhen counterinsurgencies start talking about "Ruthlessness", "Brutality and Savagery" is what actually happens. The former regretably becomes a synonym for the latter.

Stephen

Subotei

2007-04-23, 11:04 AM

Its jumping back a few posts, but Even MBTs aren't full protection:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6583607.stm

Raum

2007-04-23, 12:27 PM

Uggh. Someone needs to read up on the brutal "screening centres" operated by the British in Kenya during the early days of the state of emergency. The first reaction of the Colonial Office and police to discontent amongst the Kikuyu was to provide arms and official roles to the white settlers.

The reason that the British Army was able to defeat the Mau Mau was their success in cutting the insurgency off from the civilian population. By restricting them to the woods and starving them from supplies it was possible for Erskine to bring his numbers to bear on the isolated elements. This would have been impossible without the concurrent systematic internment of almost the entire Kikuyu population.

Again the emphasis lies in the campaign against the civilian population as much as the insurgents themselves.I think you read too much into the phrase “police work”. I agree with your description of the detainment and treatment of civilian supporters of the insurgency, it was brutal and non-judicial. However, it was applied to specific targets for a reason. In other words, interning a town where at least some residents are known insurgent supporters requires a certain amount of detective / intelligence work.

Basically, directed brutality may be necessary but random brutality is likely to create more support for the insurgents. And total brutality is simply genocide.

Through out history, the UK has what is probably the best track record against insurgent forces. They’ve fought them more or less successfully in Kenya (Mau Maus), South Africa (Boers), Ireland (IRA), and the peasant insurgency in colonial India. There are others, but those four show a fairly successful pattern.

The British use five essential elements:
Identify the enemy and their reason for existence.
Co-ordinate establishment resources against the enemy.
Contain the enemy and wear it down tactically.
Isolate and marginalize the enemy both politically and militarily.
Destroy the enemy.While brutality may be part of numbers 3 and 4, it doesn’t have to be if you can accomplish those goals in other manners.

Joran

2007-04-23, 12:59 PM

You also have to be willing to sacrifice an entire generation of your best and brightest. The British basically indoctrinated their public school students and sent them abroad to take up "The White Man's Burden". These were people who believed in what they were doing and were willing to spend years abroad, risking death and disease, to bring "civilization" to the world.

2007-04-23, 01:04 PM

In other words, interning a town where at least some residents are known insurgent supporters requires a certain amount of detective / intelligence work.Unfortunately, and I do mean unfortunately, this was not the case. The only "detective work" that went into detaining civilians in Kenya was as to whether a suspect was Kikuyu. Ultimately the Pipeline system was expanded to process virtually the entire Kikuyu population. It was "enlightened" British attitudes that believed that the entire population had sworn an oath to the Mau Mau and so each individual must be made to renounce this oath by force.

Through out history, the UK has what is probably the best track record against insurgent forces. They’ve fought them more or less successfully in Kenya (Mau Maus), South Africa (Boers), Ireland (IRA), and the peasant insurgency in colonial India. There are others, but those four show a fairly successful pattern.Leaving aside the fact that the war in Kenya was ultimately lost, despite military success, I would tend to agree with you. However to my mind this merely reveals the lack of conscience and sheer ruthlessness of the British Empire.

With reference to your points below, its worth noting, again restricting ourselves to Kenya, that the British continually refused to admit the motives and valid complaints of the Mau Mau and continued to view them as ignorant savages. In the end it was sheer brutality, and the "processing" of over a million men, women and children, that destroyed the movement.

Matthew

2007-04-23, 02:02 PM

*wanders back into the thread after having lost Internet for a few days*

Nearly all scimitars, falchions, and whatnot are one-handed. I think the most curved one every found was a shamshir.

There are no surviving examples of battle-used two-handed falchions/scimitars that I am aware of. However, there are period illustrations of such weapons. The one I was able to find on the Internet is 15th century.

http://www.thearma.org/arttalk/at7.htm

There are other illustrations, but I can't find ones on the web right now.

I do remember some examples of two-handed scimitars used for ceremonial and execution purposes, but they are very obviously not for battle. Most cultures had execution-only kinds of swords & axes, so this isn't that unusual.

Also, there's the Falx. This weapon was normally two-handed, and it was curved, but the curve goes the other way. It's basically a scythe blade, with the edge on the inside of the curve. I don't think this counts for what you're looking for though. :smallsmile:
Yeah, I got myself a bit confused about this, but what the poster was actually asking was if there was ever a Sword that looked like the one in PHB that is labelled Falchion:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/ph35_gallery/PHB35_PG120_WEB.jpg
(Third one up on the right) [Edit 1] Crap, have Wizards stopped us linking directly to their images now? Oh well, here: Link (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/ph35_gallery/PHB35_PG120_WEB.jpg) [Edit 2] Oh, image is back, good.

Looks a lot like an exaggerated Falchion, which is no surprise looking at the 'War Hammer' (sigh). Anywho, the closest thing I could find to this was the Chinese Dadao (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadao):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Dadao_3D.jpg/180px-Dadao_3D.jpg

No idea how 'real' or battle worthy that might be, though.

Raum

2007-04-23, 02:25 PM

Unfortunately, and I do mean unfortunately, this was not the case. The only "detective work" that went into detaining civilians in Kenya was as to whether a suspect was Kikuyu. Hmm, from what I've read the British forced everyone to register but only detained those accused of being supporters, passive or otherwise. Mind, I'm not attempting to defend their actions as ethical or even justified, merely as reasoned. But the source I read may have been incorrect also, it's not something I've studied except in passing.

With reference to your points below, its worth noting, again restricting ourselves to Kenya, that the British continually refused to admit the motives and valid complaints of the Mau Mau and continued to view them as ignorant savages. In the end it was sheer brutality, and the "processing" of over a million men, women and children, that destroyed the movement.Yeah, it took them decades to recognize valid complaints much closer to home in Ireland, not surprising they don't see it when it's farther away.

Stephen_E

2007-04-23, 09:02 PM

It's also worth noting that despite the British sucessfully breaking the insurgents they were fighting they pretty much lost the war to the insurgents in that the insurgent aims were achieved. With the exception of Malaysia, the British merely delayed their loss, and even in Malaysia the insurgents got some of their aims (the overthrow of the British) if not a Communist Govt, and I'm not sure just how dedicated the insurgency was to the 2nd issue (the leadership, yes, but I did in the past run into the suggestions that it was one of the least "communist" communist insurgencies).

One of the most common features of Insurgencies is that the people fighting then deny the insurgents have ANY legitimacy and from there proceed to deny them rights as prisoners. Also if you deny them any legitmacy you remove negoiations from the equation. The problem is that any 1/2 way effective insurgency DOES have legitimate issues. If it didn't it wouldn't be able to get support within the population, and without that they simply become a pissant terrorist group, ala Beider Mienhoff, Red Brigade, ecetre. Given that there are legitimate issues, while you can, with a lot of hard work and brutality, break said insurgencie, the problem willtend to raise it's head again until you actually solve it. Thus while the British broke or drew with the insurgencies named, it did in the end concede many of their points (the same in the Phillipines insurgency against the US).

Stephen

Dervag

2007-04-23, 09:14 PM

I have yet to see any instance of insurgents even attempting to hold by the Hague or Geneva conventions.First of all, the Geneva and Hague conventions are based on the assumption that the signatory has the resources of a nation-state. They must be able to accomodate POWs in well furnished camps, for instance.

If they weren't on the low end of a very steep power differential they wouldn't be an insurgency in the first place.

Ruthlessness does not, despite your statements to the contrary, mean brutality or lack of rule of law. It simply means not shying away from what needs to be done, no matter how distatsteful.There is one problem with that. When we express willingness to 'do what needs to be done, no matter how distasteful', we generally end up doing things that are both distasteful and not necessary. Look at the abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Gharab. In the name of using 'stern measures' to extract useful information, we create an atmosphere in which anyone on our side can commit gratuitous, brutal, and atrocious acts without fear of repercussions.

Wehrkind

2007-04-23, 11:40 PM

Sundog

2007-04-24, 12:52 AM

First of all, the Geneva and Hague conventions are based on the assumption that the signatory has the resources of a nation-state. They must be able to accomodate POWs in well furnished camps, for instance.

If they weren't on the low end of a very steep power differential they wouldn't be an insurgency in the first place.

That is true, but it does not excuse the torture and murder of those they DO capture alive. Nor is it a valid excuse for refusing surrender under the H and G conventions - which DO, incidentally, acknowledge civil wars and insurrections as valid wars. Is this a problem for the insurgents? Undoubtedly. And I tend to read their response to it as an indication of whether I am facing an army, or a mob of murdering thugs.

There is one problem with that. When we express willingness to 'do what needs to be done, no matter how distasteful', we generally end up doing things that are both distasteful and not necessary. Look at the abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Gharab. In the name of using 'stern measures' to extract useful information, we create an atmosphere in which anyone on our side can commit gratuitous, brutal, and atrocious acts without fear of repercussions.

Yes, that is a problem. The solution to it is strong discipline and enforcement of regulations. The soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib should have been imprisoned for years; their commanding officer should either be with them, or, if he was unaware of the situation, drummed out of the service for incompetence. The fact that none of this occurred is yet more evidence of the stupidity and inability of the current military high commands.

Stephen_E

2007-04-24, 01:01 AM

I love how "Turn out the bad guys, or the town will be leveled in trying to root them out." was taken to read "We are just going to shoot you all." Honestly for me, it highlighted the prejudices of the reader, in the sense that it was what they expected to read, not what they actually did.
Warning the civilian population that you intend to fight those insurgents inside a town, and giving the option to be on your side or deal with the conflict (fleeing town, or getting in a bomb shelter being two options other than "die") is rather gentlemanly compared to how most wars are fought. There is also absolutely nothing in the Geneva of Hague rules about fighting in civilian occupied locales. You go to where the enemy is. It is also worth noting that those rules of war only apply to signatory countries. There is no such thing as a treaty which applies to nations who don't sign the treaty..

"Turn out the bad guys, or the town will be leveled in trying to root them out." isn't warning the population that you'll fight the insurgents inside the town. It's saying "we'll make a point of destroying your town if you don't give us your wholehearted support", and that's exactly what happens when threats like that are made, so suggesting we're jumping to conclusions is to say the least disingenous. In the process of demolishing the town many civilians will be killed. This is again based on emperical evidence. Note: Your statement wasn't "The town might be damaged as we drive them out" it was a declaration of intent to destroy the town. If you intended to convay a different message you need to revise your statement. We did correctly understand what you actually said.

As much as people are hopping on Sundog, he is correct. It is not just the insurgents you have to defeat, but the will of those who support them. Sherman's march to the sea did not attack troops, but rather brought the consequences of war home to the American South who had largely supported the conflict from afar. Once those civilians realized that they too could be injured by what had before been largely a war located in the North, they were less interested in continuing it..

The ACW wasn't an insurgency, and the South collapsed because much of its ability to resist had been destoyed by the march. Not because there will had been "broken". Breaking the will of the populace was the theory behind bombing civilian populations in WW2. It was a dismal failure.

As to armored personel carriers that are part tank, part armored car, the point is that for the job something better is needed. It might be tricky to come up with, but there is a need for it. People thought the possibility of a tank was madness 110 years ago, now look where we are.

Wehrkind. Can you make clear what is wrong with the modified Humvees as Urban Patrol units, and what exactly are you looking for.

As has been pointed out, even MBTs can be disabled or destroyed by IEDs ecetre, so I think asking for something that is invunerable to damage is pointless. Also whatever you want to replace the Humvees with must be in the comparative price range or you're reducing your patrol capacity, and losing anyway. My understanding (and any Iraq veterans feel free to give imput here) is that currently if a Humvee patrol comes underfire they either run if they think the situation warrants it (and the Humvee has a decent amount of speed for that) or they bail out looking for the attackers while the turret gunners provide support. The modified Humvees been largely immune to light infantry weapons. If the Humvee IS destroyed it can be replaced relatively cheaply (I did say "largely immune", not "Completely invunerable") Heavy Infantry weapons and IEDs can potentially take out ANYTHING. You could go for drones, but jamming could become a problem. To get around that you could go to independant units, but 1) we don't have the tech currently, 2) they're likely to be expensive, and 3) Terminators (and make no mistake, that is what we'd be talking about) may have their own problems.

Stephen

Stephen_E

2007-04-24, 01:20 AM

Quote:
There is one problem with that. When we express willingness to 'do what needs to be done, no matter how distasteful', we generally end up doing things that are both distasteful and not necessary. Look at the abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Gharab. In the name of using 'stern measures' to extract useful information, we create an atmosphere in which anyone on our side can commit gratuitous, brutal, and atrocious acts without fear of repercussions.

Yes, that is a problem. The solution to it is strong discipline and enforcement of regulations. The soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib should have been imprisoned for years; their commanding officer should either be with them, or, if he was unaware of the situation, drummed out of the service for incompetence. The fact that none of this occurred is yet more evidence of the stupidity and inability of the current military high commands.

The problem is that you yourself talk about the necessity of been ruthless and doing the hard things that are necessary. There's a large body of people out there who feel torture and other such crimes ARE necessary (look at any of the Paladin debates on this board). The US Atorney Generals office was trying to get the Supreme court to sign off that the President had the legal right to authorise these sorts of activities. IIRC the US General Sanchez, in charge in the Iraq theatre at the time, signed off on instructions on what forms of torture was acceptable.

OK. You say the leadership was incompetent. Can you give me examples of insurgency conflicts where the ruthlessness was displayed, and the necessary hard acts done, without things sliding into the abuses that most of us seem to see happening?

Stephen

Wehrkind

2007-04-24, 01:36 AM

"Turn out the bad guys, or the town will be leveled in trying to root them out." isn't warning the population that you'll fight the insurgents inside the town. It's saying "we'll make a point of destroying your town if you don't give us your wholehearted support", and that's exactly what happens when threats like that are made, so suggesting we're jumping to conclusions is to say the least disingenous. In the process of demolishing the town many civilians will be killed. This is again based on emperical evidence. Note: Your statement wasn't "The town might be damaged as we drive them out" it was a declaration of intent to destroy the town. If you intended to convay a different message you need to revise your statement. We did correctly understand what you actually said.
See, that's the thing. Things get destroyed in a warzone, because the state of the warzone is secondary to the goal of defeating the enemy. Telling them anything other than "it is probably going to be leveled" is at best optimistic to the point of shading the truth, and at worst a lie that implies you are not willing to level the town to defeat the enemy, showing weakness. (And, I noticed you backed away from the killing the civilians part. No convention or treaty specifies destroying civilian infrastructure and buildings off limits if they are unoccupied.)
As a further point, the whole point of the statement IS "You fight our enemy, or avoid getting in our way." If people think they can support your enemy AND not get harmed in the process (in this case materialistically) you will have a lot of people who will help those they feel are either morally correct in the 'they are following tradition' sort of way, or those that your enemy threatens to fight them.
The problem is that most people take the path of least resistance, hoping that the result won't be as bad as might be feared. You sometimes have to force people to do what you want in terms of "Do what I say, and be left alone, or defy me, and pay the price immediately" because the other guy is doing that as well. Yea, it sucks for the guy in the middle, but the middle is always a sucky place to be, bother morally and physically. When you are in the middle of a fight, if you do not pick a side, you are going to be fought by both.

The ACW wasn't an insurgency, and the South collapsed because much of its ability to resist had been destoyed by the march. Not because there will had been "broken". Breaking the will of the populace was the theory behind bombing civilian populations in WW2. It was a dismal failure.
How was it not an insurgency? A lot of people rebelled and set up their own government, starting a war. While it is true they did not use the same tactics as insurgents now, that was only because the balance of power was more at parity, guerilla warfare not being much of a use (though still used.) Like all conflicts, it ended when the enemy was FORCED to submit, part of which was achieved by cutting off supplies and support from the home front, and making those back home waver and wonder if this was really a good idea after all. Those back home were not actively shooting, but they were giving moral support to those in the field. As soon as they decided it was not a good idea to fight any more, the war ended, and those insurgents still in the field (doing night rides and the like to spread terror) eventually lost support and general good will.

Wehrkind. Can you make clear what is wrong with the modified Humvees as Urban Patrol units, and what exactly are you looking for.

As has been pointed out, even MBTs can be disabled or destroyed by IEDs ecetre, so I think asking for something that is invunerable to damage is pointless. Also whatever you want to replace the Humvees with must be in the comparative price range or you're reducing your patrol capacity, and losing anyway. My understanding (and any Iraq veterans feel free to give imput here) is that currently if a Humvee patrol comes underfire they either run if they think the situation warrants it (and the Humvee has a decent amount of speed for that) or they bail out looking for the attackers while the turret gunners provide support. The modified Humvees been largely immune to light infantry weapons. If the Humvee IS destroyed it can be replaced relatively cheaply (I did say "largely immune", not "Completely invunerable") Heavy Infantry weapons and IEDs can potentially take out ANYTHING. You could go for drones, but jamming could become a problem. To get around that you could go to independant units, but 1) we don't have the tech currently, 2) they're likely to be expensive, and 3) Terminators (and make no mistake, that is what we'd be talking about) may have their own problems.

They get blown up too easily, both by IEDs (which are of course very tricky to deal with) and rockets and other light gear.
This shouldn't be obscured by what I have been saying, but I will try again. It is not that they are bad vehicles, it is just that they do not provide the protection from ambush that urban patroling requires. If it is true the up-armored versions are nearly impervious to man portable weapons fire, fine, they are better than I thought. IED's are always going to be an issue, and probably a problem insurmountable by armor and such.
However, if up-armored cars are still getting ripped apart by common man portable arms, then there is a serious problem moving troops in them, as you are only creating highly obvious targets. One then either needs to make the targets harder to offer more protection (which seems like a good plan for patroling urban centers), change doctrine, or accept the level of damage you are taking.
I accept that it is quite possible that man portable systems are capable of wrecking any armor you put at them. I also accept that we really have not had that many casualties in Iraq when you look at it relative to other wars and conflicts. However, I do think that if we are going to be spending a good bit of time, blood and treasure securing places where the populace puts up with insurgents in their midst, and local police are not up to or willing to stop them, then we should invest in a vehicle that allows more protection then we have at current, something that is impervious to a large majority of what is thrown at us. If the Hummer up-armored fulfills that role, fine. But from what I have read and heard, it does not seem to.

Stephen I do agree with this statement, though I find it somewhat redundant.

Wehrkind

2007-04-24, 01:40 AM

OK. You say the leadership was incompetent. Can you give me examples of insurgency conflicts where the ruthlessness was displayed, and the necessary hard acts done, without things sliding into the abuses that most of us seem to see happening?
This makes me nervous since it might be sliding into out of bounds areas for this board. If not, I would be curious as to what "abuses" you see happening so far in this war.
I would be quite happy with a PM instead if you think going into the subject broached violates the rules.

Sundog

2007-04-24, 05:14 AM

OK. You say the leadership was incompetent. Can you give me examples of insurgency conflicts where the ruthlessness was displayed, and the necessary hard acts done, without things sliding into the abuses that most of us seem to see happening?

Stephen

Certainly. The British suppression of the Malaysian insurgency, and Peru's defeat of the Shining Path under President Fujimori.

The British response was notably harsh, and certainly never gave an inch they didn't have to, but they accepted surrender, treated surrendered/defecting insurgents reasonably well, and obeyed the rules of war. This is also largely true in Peru.

Now, I'm certain you can point to certain events and actions that violated all the rules in both cases. But these were isolated incidents, of the type you have in every war - and which, if you have good discipline and a competent chain of command, will generally be punished as crimes. Some, unfortunately, will fall through the cracks; we live in an imperfect world.

2007-04-24, 06:23 AM

@Raum: I cannot recommend Elkins' Imperial Reckoning highly enough. As a study of the Mau Mau uprising, and the sheer brutality of the British response, it is unsurpassed.

I love how "Turn out the bad guys, or the town will be leveled in trying to root them out." was taken to read "We are just going to shoot you all."And what happens when the village refuses to hand over its sons? You have to be prepared to follow through on your threat. Goodbye town.

Certainly. The British suppression of the Malaysian insurgency, and Peru's defeat of the Shining Path under President Fujimori.Malaysia is a poor example. It was a campaign waged by an isolated Chinese minority, many of whom were later deported, contained to rural areas. Yet it still required a mass campaign against the Chinese population involving the use of concentration camps and widespread use of torture. This naturally gave rise to certain "excesses" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batang_Kali_massacre)

For an interesting article that compares Malaysia to a more recent conflict, see here (http://www.lowyinstitute.org/PublicationGet.asp?i=215)

The example of Peru is also deeply flawed. Aside from the laughable assertion that the government forces did not commit abuses, really that's ludicrous given their widely documented nature, the decline of the Shining Path was the result of its collpase in popularity due to its own actions.

Sundog

2007-04-24, 07:36 AM

@Raum: I cannot recommend Elkins' Imperial Reckoning highly enough. As a study of the Mau Mau uprising, and the sheer brutality of the British response, it is unsurpassed.

And what happens when the village refuses to hand over its sons? You have to be prepared to follow through on your threat. Goodbye town.

Malaysia is a poor example. It was a campaign waged by an isolated Chinese minority, many of whom were later deported, contained to rural areas. Yet it still required a mass campaign against the Chinese population involving the use of concentration camps and widespread use of torture. This naturally gave rise to certain "excesses" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batang_Kali_massacre)

For an interesting article that compares Malaysia to a more recent conflict, see here (http://www.lowyinstitute.org/PublicationGet.asp?i=215)

The example of Peru is also deeply flawed. Aside from the laughable assertion that the government forces did not commit abuses, really that's ludicrous given their widely documented nature, the decline of the Shining Path was the result of its collpase in popularity due to its own actions.

I cannot agree in either case. The "massacre" you cite in Malaysia is neither representative of British actions in the insurgency, nor has any definitive account ever been formed. The allegations of torture are frankly not believable, and the "Concetration Camps" were nothing of the kind - they were safehouse villages for people being targetted by the insurgents. Frankly, you seem to have swallowed a lot of propaganda that's got as much to do with reality as the average Kim Jong Il speech.

Likewise, your "widely documented" abuses in the war against the Shining Path are indeed widely spread - and totally without any kind of confirmation. Were there abuses? Probably. It's pretty much unavoidable. But there is no evidence of the kind of systematic brutality that has been alleged.

2007-04-24, 08:06 AM

I cannot agree in either case. The "massacre" you cite in Malaysia is neither representative of British actions in the insurgency, nor has any definitive account ever been formed. The allegations of torture are frankly not believable, and the "Concetration Camps" were nothing of the kind - they were safehouse villages for people being targetted by the insurgents. Frankly, you seem to have swallowed a lot of propaganda that's got as much to do with reality as the average Kim Jong Il speech.The massacre you admit occurred. That's a clear abuse leading from the British position. Unless you contend that British soldiers are/were likely to massacre civilians anyway? That the matter was whitewashed in London is no surprise to anyone with an even passing interest in or knowledge of British colonial policy.

But what I really want to focus on is the "safehouse villiages"[sic]. These were villages in which the native population was forcibly detained "for their protection". Such was the danger to these villages that they were "surrounded by double perimeter fences that were floodlit at night; they were protected by a combination of police and home guards on a twenty-four hour basis". What good hosts the British were to provide such security :smallannoyed:

All in all the techniques that the British first experimented with in Malaysia, although their use of concentration camps infamously dates back to the Boer War, would be deliberately copied in Kenya with horrific results.

Likewise, your "widely documented" abuses in the war against the Shining Path are indeed widely spread - and totally without any kind of confirmation. Were there abuses? Probably. It's pretty much unavoidable. But there is no evidence of the kind of systematic brutality that has been alleged.What? Where do you get this idea? Recent reports have established (http://hrw.org/english/docs/2003/08/28/peru6334.htm) that up to one third of deaths were caused by government security forces.

Sundog

2007-04-24, 10:24 AM

The massacre you admit occurred. That's a clear abuse leading from the British position. Unless you contend that British soldiers are/were likely to massacre civilians anyway? That the matter was whitewashed in London is no surprise to anyone with an even passing interest in or knowledge of British colonial policy.

Of course I admit it occurred. It's a documented event. But I continue to maintain (and I'll say it again, since you seem to have missed it the first two times) that it did not represent either British policy or British general practice. Incidents happen in every war. Policy and practice are far more important.

But what I really want to focus on is the "safehouse villiages"[sic]. These were villages in which the native population was forcibly detained "for their protection". Such was the danger to these villages that they were "surrounded by double perimeter fences that were floodlit at night; they were protected by a combination of police and home guards on a twenty-four hour basis". What good hosts the British were to provide such security :smallannoyed:

Yes, they were. In addition to 24 hour security, the population of the safehouses were afforded better accomodations and facilities than they were used to, an opportunity to continue their trades and businesses, and were provided with opportunities for education and self-improvement.

The real test came when the insurgency was defeated, and the vast majority chose to remain in the safehouse villages rather than return to their old lands. They had been kept safe, become more prosperous, and had a significant improvement in lifestyle. You can call them concentration camps if you wish; I would not.

What? Where do you get this idea? Recent reports have established (http://hrw.org/english/docs/2003/08/28/peru6334.htm) that up to one third of deaths were caused by government security forces.

Recent reports have accused government forces of such. I will withold judgement pending more information.

Subotei

2007-04-24, 05:06 PM

One of the most common features of Insurgencies is that the people fighting then deny the insurgents have ANY legitimacy and from there proceed to deny them rights as prisoners. Also if you deny them any legitmacy you remove negoiations from the equation. The problem is that any 1/2 way effective insurgency DOES have legitimate issues. If it didn't it wouldn't be able to get support within the population, and without that they simply become a pissant terrorist group, ala Beider Mienhoff, Red Brigade, ecetre. Given that there are legitimate issues, while you can, with a lot of hard work and brutality, break said insurgencie, the problem willtend to raise it's head again until you actually solve it. Thus while the British broke or drew with the insurgencies named, it did in the end concede many of their points (the same in the Phillipines insurgency against the US).

Stephen

This is a very valid point: very few insegency situations are resolved militarily, it usually end via some negotiated settlement or the insugents win by default because the occupying power can no longer justify the drain on resources and withdraw.

In Northern Ireland the UK realised early on a military solution wasn't viable and began a policy of containing the violence to the minimum possible. Eventually the IRA also realised they were never going to win militarily either, as the UK Gov wasn't going anywhere. This brought about the conditions where everyone realised their best option was for a negotiated peace. It took a very, very long time.

In Iraq the US Gov hasn't yet realised it can't win by military means. This is no isolated rural group that can be rounded up - they are deep in urban areas and have powerful friends. The US also doesn't have the will or the means to be as patient as the British in NI, to ware the insurgents down. Remember a majority of the NI populace actually supported the UK Gov - not the same for the US in Iraq.

The insurgents on the other hand can win militarily - they just need to maintain resistance until political/economic pressure to bring the troops home takes over, then step out of the shadows and claim the glory. Because of this US military weakness, any US effort to start negotiations would begin at a disadvantage, and all the interested parties know this. I can't see it ending well for anyone, to be frank.

Dervag

2007-04-24, 05:32 PM

That is true, but it does not excuse the torture and murder of those they DO capture alive. Nor is it a valid excuse for refusing surrender under the H and G conventions - which DO, incidentally, acknowledge civil wars and insurrections as valid wars. Is this a problem for the insurgents? Undoubtedly. And I tend to read their response to it as an indication of whether I am facing an army, or a mob of murdering thugs.So, what should their response be? Do they adopt a 'catch and release' program or something?

Yes, that is a problem. The solution to it is strong discipline and enforcement of regulations. The soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib should have been imprisoned for years; their commanding officer should either be with them, or, if he was unaware of the situation, drummed out of the service for incompetence. The fact that none of this occurred is yet more evidence of the stupidity and inability of the current military high commands.The trouble is that when you go around saying "we must be ruthless in doing what needs doing," the logic of war leads to the torture and abuse of captives. Captured rebels will sometimes have useful information that can benefit your forces, save the lives of your soldiers, and shorten the war. You need that information. If you encourage your prison camp guards and commandants to pursue the information (as in Iraq), chastise them for not finding the information (as in Iraq), and emphasize the need to ruthlessly 'do what needs doing,' that leads to torture and abuse of the prisoners.

Sundog

2007-04-24, 06:53 PM

So, what should their response be? Do they adopt a 'catch and release' program or something?

That would be one option. Another would be to make an agreement with a friendly country to intern captives; or they could initiate talks with the force they arefacing to solve the problem (parole systems, agreements not to use released troops against their former captives, an agreed upon location for a prisoner control complex, etc.)

The trouble is that when you go around saying "we must be ruthless in doing what needs doing," the logic of war leads to the torture and abuse of captives. Captured rebels will sometimes have useful information that can benefit your forces, save the lives of your soldiers, and shorten the war. You need that information. If you encourage your prison camp guards and commandants to pursue the information (as in Iraq), chastise them for not finding the information (as in Iraq), and emphasize the need to ruthlessly 'do what needs doing,' that leads to torture and abuse of the prisoners.

Yes - unless it is specifically prohibited, and that prohibition is enforced. My statement was Ruthlessness is a Virtue, NOT "be ruthless only to the enemy."

Wehrkind

2007-04-24, 08:40 PM

And what happens when the village refuses to hand over its sons? You have to be prepared to follow through on your threat. Goodbye town. You clearly state a pointless argument. Yes, as I stated, if the populace does not comply and hand over the enemies, they need to be prepared to face the consequences of your army going in to defeat them. The idea is that you do not let the populace act in a passive aggressive manner, supporting your enemy either tacitly or intentionally, while relying on your sweetness to keep you from doing anything about it.

You might not have been following the conversation Om, but we are talking about a war, not a policing action. At best, when things come to war, people are going to die, and things are going to be destroyed. What a sucessful war requires is not letting your enemy use your more gentle tendancies against you. I am not generally in favor of killing random people, or destroying their towns. If those people are sheltering the enemy, and that enemy needs to be destroyed, then that is an entirely different matter.

My whole point was not to just show up in the middle of the night and napalm everything for two miles without warning, but to give the locals a chance to oust the enemy, leave or take shelter, or face the consequences of having a war going on in their town. Maybe a few towns try their luck, but after the first one or two, you can bet the rest will quite happily turn over those they see to be on the losing side. History is full of that.

Dervag

2007-04-24, 11:16 PM

That would be one option. Another would be to make an agreement with a friendly country to intern captives; or they could initiate talks with the force they arefacing to solve the problem (parole systems, agreements not to use released troops against their former captives, an agreed upon location for a prisoner control complex, etc.)So in other words, they have no way to make sure that their captives don't end up shooting at them again except either the friendliness of another country (which will have to have a land border with rebel territory), or the trustworthiness of the government they were rebelling against in the first place.

That puts them in a very serious bind, and I think you'd have a different attitude towards the problem if you were leading a rebellion. I don't know what decision you'd make, but I think you'd be more reluctant to make what you currently consider to be the 'right' choice so casually.

Yes - unless it is specifically prohibited, and that prohibition is enforced. My statement was Ruthlessness is a Virtue, NOT "be ruthless only to the enemy."That doesn't work nearly as well in practice as it does in theory.

Raum

2007-04-24, 11:18 PM

At least it doesn't work so well in democracies. An autocracy...who knows.

Wehrkind

2007-04-25, 12:14 AM

Raum

2007-04-25, 01:03 AM

Actually, it does... The trick to it is to create only rules you actually intend to enforce. The problem is that too many rules get made with the assumption of selective enforcement, so when someone tries to ensure the rule of the law, it is considered unfair. At best rules no one cares about create a significant lack of respect for the law. At worst it completely unhinges the concept of a law based system, and replaces it with a system where those who enforce the laws have arbitrary power.

Hence the tyrany you mention Raum.If it were an ideal world...maybe. But in a real world democracy, those laws are going to be chosen, phrased, and implemented by committee. As such you'll have very few significant laws which can be applied equally. And once you factor in the committees deciding how they're applied (i.e. juries) you have even less "equality" in applied law.

Yet, in many ways, a democracy is the ultimate in ruthlessness. The will of the majority is all that matters. Or maybe it's inconsistent enough to be labeled "whim of the majority"...

I think you'd have better luck creating that equality and absolute respect for law in a benevolent autocracy. The hard part is keeping the autocracy benevolent.

Wehrkind

2007-04-25, 01:27 AM

If it were an ideal world...maybe. But in a real world democracy, those laws are going to be chosen, phrased, and implemented by committee. As such you'll have very few significant laws which can be applied equally. And once you factor in the committees deciding how they're applied (i.e. juries) you have even less "equality" in applied law.

Yet, in many ways, a democracy is the ultimate in ruthlessness. The will of the majority is all that matters. Or maybe it's inconsistent enough to be labeled "whim of the majority"...

I think you'd have better luck creating that equality and absolute respect for law in a benevolent autocracy. The hard part is keeping the autocracy benevolent.

No, not in an ideal world. It is an ideal to be worked towards, but that does not make it an all or nothing proposition. Yes, human beings are flawed and are going to do silly things periodically, but that doesn't mean that the ideal is not the standard by which you should measure things.
The whole idea of the Rule of Law is that the laws are applied to everyone. Whether a jury sometimes makes bad decisions, or a government sometimes makes bad laws is irrelevant to the argument of whether or not it is good.

Also, you are misunderstanding "democracy" to mean "unlimited democracy". Athens had an unlimited democracy, in which the government could do anything it wanted (essentially, I am sure there were some specifics) so long as a majority voted for it. That is not the rule of law, but tyranny of the majority as you stated.
The USA has a Constitutional democracy, specifically a representational sort. (More technically a republic.) The majority is not legally capable of doing certain things, even if they vote directly (which they are not except in some states). Now, of course all that is moot if the laws are ignored, and it has been the case that the Constitution has been ignored in some cases. By and large, however, it is not a tyranny of the majority since the government is severely limited in what it is allowed to do. Now, as "mission creep" kicked in, those rights are slowly eroded as the government subsumes more and more power, but that is another story.

Sundog

2007-04-25, 04:34 AM

So in other words, they have no way to make sure that their captives don't end up shooting at them again except either the friendliness of another country (which will have to have a land border with rebel territory), or the trustworthiness of the government they were rebelling against in the first place.

That puts them in a very serious bind, and I think you'd have a different attitude towards the problem if you were leading a rebellion. I don't know what decision you'd make, but I think you'd be more reluctant to make what you currently consider to be the 'right' choice so casually.

Yes, you're probably right. But that doesn't change it from being the right choice.
Taking the quick and easy path seldom works out in the long run. And taking the moral high ground is one hell of an advantage in the propaganda war.

That doesn't work nearly as well in practice as it does in theory.

Perhaps. But we are, after all, talking theory. And generally, the closer you can get your practice to the theory it operates from, the better the end results.

Neon Knight

2007-04-25, 06:37 AM

Hey, ho,

I was wondering, are there any records about what injuries a Gatling gun can inflict on people? I'd imagine that the large 7.62mm NATO guns could literally pulp a man if he received the full fury of a few seconds burst of fire.

2007-04-25, 07:31 AM

Of course I admit it occurred. It's a documented event. But I continue to maintain (and I'll say it again, since you seem to have missed it the first two times) that it did not represent either British policy or British general practice. Incidents happen in every war. Policy and practice are far more important.Which brings us back to the role of political oversight and RoE to ensure that "incidents" like this do not occur.

But to focus on Batang Kali for a moment. In this case we are faced with two possibilities. One is that "incidents" like this are inevitable and any British regiment may massacre a village at any moment. The alternative is that this atrocity was the result of the conditions and orders under which the soldiers were operating.

The purpose of RoE and the "softly softly" approach is to ensure that soldiers do not take it into their heads to stage another Batang Kali. When you take a "ruthless" stance from the top then "abuses" and "incidents" are inevitable. This has always been the case and there is not one documented campaign where it was not.

Yes, they were. In addition to 24 hour security, the population of the safehouses were afforded better accomodations and facilities than they were used to, an opportunity to continue their trades and businesses, and were provided with opportunities for education and self-improvement.Um hm. So then what exactly would you call a barb-wire camp in which non-combatants are interned after being forced from their lands? I know what the OED (http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50046174/50046174se1?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=concentration+camp&first=1&max_to_show=10&hilite=50046174se1) defines it as.

Recent reports have accused government forces of such. I will withhold judgement pending more information.Again... what? The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the most in depth and extensive study of the crisis and yet you will "withhold judgement"? I have to ask as to just what you're waiting for?

My whole point was not to just show up in the middle of the night and napalm everything for two miles without warning, but to give the locals a chance to oust the enemy, leave or take shelter, or face the consequences of having a war going on in their town.The result is however the same. You may not set out to level the town to the ground but that is how it is going to turn out. Who do you think comprises the members of an insurgency - terrorists, foreigners, jihadists? It is the sons and daughters of this town are you are demanding on a silver platter. Assuming that the townfolk even have the ability to hand over these armed insurgents, which is itself deeply flawed, they will never hand them them over. This is because a) the town knows the kids who have graduated from throwing rocks to launching RPGs and b) they support them.

An insurgency depends on local support to thrive. If it does not have this then it is doomed. Your response to this support is to employ brute force to make the population suffer in the name of "consequences". You go through a town with guns a blazing and civilians are going to die. That's not the issue though; the problem is that these civilians have family and cousins who are promptly going to take up the gun. Its the classic scenario - the more "bad guys" you kill, the more support you lose and the more gunmen appear.

Rasilak

2007-04-25, 08:09 AM

I was wondering, are there any records about what injuries a Gatling gun can inflict on people? I'd imagine that the large 7.62mm NATO guns could literally pulp a man if he received the full fury of a few seconds burst of fire.
If you're talking about something like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minigun), putting a 'few seconds burst' (ie some 100 bullets) in human targets is pretty much overkill, and a waste of ammo. The result might be quite *splat*, but I can't quote any records for this, so its mostly a (not so) educated guess.

And now for something completely different:
I noticed that naginatas and two-handed versions of the falx look quite alike, apart from the sligthly different length of the shaft and that the other side of the blade is sharpened. How useful would it be to sharpen both sides of the blade and use a shaft of somewhat intermediate length (like 2-3'), so the 'falx-side' can be used to hack through armor and shields or trip opponents (well, if it 'accidently' cut off a foot that would'nt be too bad either), while the 'naginata-side' could slash unarmored opponents/horses?
I plan on using it for some 'dark elf'-culture in my RPG-world, so I'd like to know if it was practical enough to develop.

Fhaolan

2007-04-25, 10:32 AM

And now for something completely different:
I noticed that naginatas and two-handed versions of the falx look quite alike, apart from the sligthly different length of the shaft and that the other side of the blade is sharpened. How useful would it be to sharpen both sides of the blade and use a shaft of somewhat intermediate length (like 2-3'), so the 'falx-side' can be used to hack through armor and shields or trip opponents (well, if it 'accidently' cut off a foot that would'nt be too bad either), while the 'naginata-side' could slash unarmored opponents/horses?
I plan on using it for some 'dark elf'-culture in my RPG-world, so I'd like to know if it was practical enough to develop.

There's probably a really good reason for this not happening much, but I have to enter into speculation because I don't know for sure.

My speculation begins with the fact than all the curved weapons I've dealt with have been single-edge. Well, not precisely. Some have had a 'false edge', a sharpened part of the opposite edge that runs some small distance up the blade. Not very far, though. The rest of that edge is a reasonably thick 'spine'. Perhaps that heavy spine is necessary, structurally, to support a curved blade?

Matthew

2007-04-25, 10:37 AM

Don't Naginata and that sort of thing have a softer and thicker side opposite the blade? I would have thought it would be difficult (and counter productive) to sharpen that side. 2-3' of length is no big deal, these things come in all shapes and sizes. If you have a double edged Glaive, what you essentially have is a Spear, though...

Kioran

2007-04-25, 01:45 PM

The thing is that a hardened, sharpened side is also brittle, an to counter that you would either have to rely on a less hardened egde or a more solid build of the weapon, both of which increases the weight considerably. I also don´t quite see the advantage of that versatility - stabbing and slahsing is sufficient in my books.....

Dervag

2007-04-25, 03:12 PM

Yes, you're probably right. But that doesn't change it from being the right choice.
Taking the quick and easy path seldom works out in the long run. And taking the moral high ground is one hell of an advantage in the propaganda war.The path of releasing prisoners whenever one captures them is barely within the realm of military possibility. It's not a question of taking the quick and easy path; it's a question of being very short on paths that don't lead over a cliff.

Perhaps. But we are, after all, talking theory. And generally, the closer you can get your practice to the theory it operates from, the better the end results.If the theory doesn't work, it's not much of a theory.

One of the great problems of prescriptive morality is that it's trivially easy to make up prescriptions that cannot be followed in real-world situations.

Piedmon_Sama

2007-04-25, 03:35 PM

So...who would win in a brawl? Why? For purposes of comparison, assume it's daylight, there's level, clear ground, and nobody is mounted. If an environmental factor would give an edge to one person, assume that it's neutral.

Aztec Pipiltin circa 1400 (mācuahuitl [obsidian sword], shield, atlatl and, say, 6 darts and Ichcahuipilli [quilted armor])

Samurai circa 1400 (o-yoroi and katana)

Germanic Knight circa 1400 (Cherbourg plate and choice of either a war sword or an arming sword and heater shield)

African Sofa of the Mali Empire circa 1400 (Shield and Tamba [stabbing spear] and 4-in-1 chain mail)

Chinese Ming Dynasty soldier circa 1400 (Lamellar armor, round wooden shield and Dao (broadsword))

Japanese Iga ninja circa 1400 (light 6-in-1 chain mail, ninja-to, 2 metsubushi [smoke bombs])

Moorish warrior circa 1400 (lamellar torso armor and round helm, shamshir - while I know this sword became popular in the 1500's I can't find any data for earlier Moorish weapons offhand, so let's assume, shall we?)

Sperm that would someday be Chuck Norris circa 1400 (gotta make it fair - and I can't think of a good 8th candidate)

I hate to drag up an old question, but oh man this would be so awesome. I'd buy tickets. Pics plz.

In all seriousness, I'd be willing to draw this (I'm an amateur artist of, I'd say, decent ability.) Well, excluding Walker, Texas Spermatazoa. I'd just need... a few clarifications... in the form of reference pics, if anyone has them. I could use images of "cherbourg" plate, and the look of a Sofa Warrior. (I found pictures on my own of O-Yoroi easily enough. The internet: your first source for Japanese ****.)

Sundog

2007-04-26, 12:58 AM

The path of releasing prisoners whenever one captures them is barely within the realm of military possibility. It's not a question of taking the quick and easy path; it's a question of being very short on paths that don't lead over a cliff.

I accept it's a difficult choice. Ultimately, it's a question of what best suits your tactics and strategy. Unfortunately, with only a few exceptions, insurgent forces look only at the tactical when making decisions such as this - and it cannot be argued that terror tactics, murder and torture are not tactically sound for them.

However, they often do NOT serve your strategy and overall goal. It is a military truism that you should make your tactics serve your strategy, not the other way around. Strategically, gaining the moral high ground and proving you are civilized gains an insurgency both support, and that jewel of jewels, legitimacy. if you are seen by the populace as a legitimate and valid alternative to the current regime, you've already won half the battle.

If the theory doesn't work, it's not much of a theory.

No theory is ever applied perfectly. You have provided no proof that my fifth point, much less my entire five points, do not work.

One of the great problems of prescriptive morality is that it's trivially easy to make up prescriptions that cannot be followed in real-world situations.

You're quite correct. All I have called for is ruthlessness when dealing with an insurgency, both towards the enemy, and towards your own troops if and when they break discipline. If an army cannot manage that simple task, then it has no business calling itself a professional military.

Dervag

2007-04-26, 01:48 AM

Unfortunately, with only a few exceptions, insurgent forces look only at the tactical when making decisions such as this - and it cannot be argued that terror tactics, murder and torture are not tactically sound for them.

However, they often do NOT serve your strategy and overall goal.You're right. I was referring exclusively to the problem of prisoners, not to all the myriad other ways in which an insurgency might or might not choose to violate the laws of war by using or not using terror tactics, murder of civilian pro-government people, and so forth.

I merely point out that POWs are a hellish problem for an insurgency because they're hard for the insurgents to hold.

No theory is ever applied perfectly. You have provided no proof that my fifth point, much less my entire five points, do not work.There are so many examples of 'ruthless' occupations that failed because the ruthlessness alienated the civilian population that I'm surprised that I should have to.

The problem is that encouraging ruthlessness encourages people on the counterinsurgent side to start paying less attention to the laws of war and to civilian casualties. By the process you have identified, this can alienate the civilians and delegitimize the counterinsurgents just as terror tactics can delegitimize the insurgents themselves.

You're quite correct. All I have called for is ruthlessness when dealing with an insurgency, both towards the enemy, and towards your own troops if and when they break discipline. If an army cannot manage that simple task, then it has no business calling itself a professional military.I think you set too high a standard of professionalism, one that human beings have an extremely hard time achieving or constructing in real-world institutions.

A policy of ruthlessness places extremely high demands on the discipline of the soldiers and on the willingness of senior officers to prosecute junior officers and enlisted men who acted wrongly in good faith. These demands are so high that they are rarely met, even by very capable and courageous militaries.

Storm Bringer

2007-04-26, 12:30 PM

Sundog

2007-04-26, 12:44 PM

in an attempt to drag this thread buck off the iraqi war (where it has no place being, personally), I've got a question i've never had a really good answer for:

can anyone explain to me why most of the western european armies chose to switch to the early firearms, dispite the condiserable downsides of them and the still strong arguements in favour of conventional missle weapons?

The usual argument made is ease of training. Once you got past the "hand-cannon" stage of gunpowder weapon development, you had a weapon that worked well in massed formations, hit hard, and could be taught to a recruit in an afternoon.

Compare this to the Welsh Longbow. The traditional way of training a Yeoman in the use of a Longbow starts, "To begin with, train his Grandfather..." These weren't a type of troop; Yeomen were a class of people in Britain, excused certain taxes and granted land inexchange for near-continuous training of the male family members as archers.

Which is fine, but put an absolute upper limit on how many Longbowmen you could draw off to war at any one time. Elsewhere in Europe, the requirements may not have been as stringent, but it still took weeks to get a man who'd never used a bow before to hit a target.

But with an early matchlock musket, all you needed was a flint and steel, a cord of slowmatch, powder, ball and musket itself, two hours training, and everything worked. Accuracy with the weapon wasn't needed, since the weapon itself was basically incapable of it - you just pointed your gun at the enemy and pulled the trigger. Get enough folks together and your opponent started getting hit, and the .50 balls ripped through people like so much paper. Sure, you lost soldiers every outing, but who cared? There were always more, and they could be taught to shoot a musket just as easily as you were.

Storm Bringer

2007-04-26, 01:33 PM

That arguement doesn't stand agianst the crossbow, which was used by most of the Euopean armies instead of longbows, for pretty much the same reasons you state.

You could train someone to use a crossbow basically as quickly as you could a big, heavy, matchlock musket, and they very good power (could penatrate the plate armour of the time at point blank).

they also MUCH better range than any musket up till the 1750's (when the rilfe started being used) and better than standard issue ones till the 1840's (when the rifle was mass produced). good crossbowmen could shoot 500m with fair accuacy. good Musketeers could do the same at maybe 70m.

it also had a rate of fire as fast as flintlock mustets, and a much faster rate than the matchlocks that they were replaced by.

so, why did they all adopt the slow, heavy, hard to use musket, along with all the diffculties of producing gunpowder and keeping it dry?

Fhaolan

2007-04-26, 02:21 PM

so, why did they all adopt the slow, heavy, hard to use musket, along with all the diffculties of producing gunpowder and keeping it dry?

To my knowledge there wasn't one overwhelming reason. There were several smaller reasons.

1) The training mentioned above.
2) The armies were already dragging large amounts of gunpowder around everywhere they went because cannons, bombards and mortars had replaced other siege-style equipment at that point, and the effect of these weapons on massed formations had been noticed. The small amount of gunpowder the handcannon and matchlock armed troups were using was trivial compared to amount used by the bombards.
3) Prestige. These were the newest and bestest. The nobles that funded these wars were all about newest and bestest, just like rich people and gearheads today. People are still people. They don't change much over time.

Adlan

2007-04-26, 02:44 PM

Also, and as much as I hate to say it, by the 1600's, the longbow was losing it's effectiveness. Under the Fudal system, being a yeoman is a pretty good life. Better pay than pure farming, a higher social status. Not to mention it was a sporting crase, a good archer was the local hero.

And then, the rise of the middle class, the beginings of the agricultural revolution and the change in battle field practice lead to the last battle useing the longbow being in the English Civil War, the hight of pike and shott.

Also the Europeans had wised up to the fact that selling the English Alpine Yew was a bad idea. The only good yew in the uk comes from the pennines and scotland, englands climate is too good for it otherwise, it grows to fast in the lowlands.

Crossbows and arleblasts are actually harder to make than a basic musket (AFAIK, I've never made a musket). they need much better basic materials, although of course, you don't need to supply gunpowder.

Kevlimin_Soulaxe

2007-04-26, 04:10 PM

Pilum

2007-04-26, 04:18 PM

I would also point to the comparative ease of churning out enough powder and shot for (say) 1000 gunners as opposed to the equivalent in well-crafted arrows and bolts for 1000 archers/crossbowmen. I was once told that there are only (or were?) two feathers per goose considered of reasonable enough quality to use for fletching - also explains why goose was a traditional English meal if you have that many of them. Even if this is an exaggeration, that's two added layers of industry needed, and skilled labour at that (perhaps less so for the goose-girls!). Powder can be churned out at industrial rates; indeed, I would argue this is the first glimmerings of industrialisation and the mechanisation of labour. Ultimately, all a bow or crossbow does is store your own muscle power. If you're tired, it takes longer to load, to pull back the string and the shots could well be weaker. A musket will go bang just as effectively no matter how long the battle takes.

What's often forgotten is the psychological impact of Shot. OK, I'm not claiming great experience, but as a 'mere' re-enactor, the impact of seeing a unit present muskets and then disappear behind a cloud of foul-smelling smoke with a big BANG! is not inconsiderable. And that's knowing they're firing nothing worse than toilet roll used for wadding! ;-) The armour piercing qualities are worth mentioning too.

Neon Knight

2007-04-26, 04:40 PM

Is converting a Glock 24 from .40 to 10mm possible, and if not, why not? Could one get the proper modifications legally?

Also, autofire with a 10mm round: Would it be too powerful to work on a submachine style weapon?

Autofire with the 10mm: Since H&K has released the MP 5/10, and MP 5 chambered for 10mm, I don't think the recoil is too powerful. From what I understand, most modern 10mm ammunition is closer to .40 S&W than the full power load of the original make, and thus have a recoil similar to the .45 ACP.

As to the Glock 24, I'm not quite sure. GLOCK discontinued the model after the release of the 34 and 35 Glock, and I don't think there is much demand for such capabilities since the Glock 20 is available in 10mm.

Kevlimin_Soulaxe

2007-04-26, 10:18 PM

Yes, I'm aware. I know there isn't much of a difference between it and the 35, maybe a fraction of an inch of barrel and a bit of styling, but I've got a real soft spot for it.

Adlan

2007-04-27, 06:00 AM

On the armour pericing qualities of Early firearms, I understood they were negligable. Buff Coats were enough to stop long range shots, and at short range the current armour of the period (blued steet plates) were proof against bullets (they had proofing marks to prove it. Tested the armour by firing a bullet at it from close range).

Wheras an Arrow, maybe upto half an inch thick, comming down from a hight at longrange will go through a buff coat, and most cheap armours or fired with a heavy bow at short range can penetrate pretty much anything around in that day and age excepting blued steel.

Pilum

2007-04-27, 06:18 AM

A pistol shot, as I understand it Adlan. Somewhat smaller than a musket ball, though at a time where the role of cavalry seems to be developing into that of chiefly chasing off the opposing cavalry (though I suppose that 'twas ever thus) perhaps more pertinent than being able to resist an infantry weapon. But overstated, quite possibly, the development of heavier armour seems to suggest this, though its ultimate disappearance would imply that there comes a point at which even the finest manufacturer of plate has to throw up his hands and cry, "Enough!"

Norsesmithy

2007-04-27, 09:22 AM

I think it was probably more like the procurement officers for the new national armies threw up their hands and cried, "How am I to secure 100,000 suits of this, at 300 Marks a suit, when the guild can only make six suits a week?"
"It would empty the royal treasury and delay our campaign a decade!"

2007-04-27, 10:34 AM

I think it was probably more like the procurement officers for the new national armies threw up their hands and cried, "How am I to secure 100,000 suits of this, at 300 Marks a suit, when the guild can only make six suits a week?"The counter argument being that it was the availability of cheap firearms that precipitated a rise in army numbers. So their adoption was a cause of evolving warfare rather than an effect.

Joran

2007-04-27, 11:07 AM

The counter argument being that it was the availability of cheap firearms that precipitated a rise in army numbers. So their adoption was a cause of evolving warfare rather than an effect.

I don't think it was causation. Geoffrey Parker argues that the trace italienne, a new form of fortification that was created to defend specifically against cannon fire, caused war to become a protracted series of sieges. Sieges require large numbers of troops and hence the large armies.

As for crossbows vs. early gunpowder weapons, I agree with all the points made so far. However, here's a different way to look at them.

The primary purpose of ranged firepower at that time was to break the enemy formation, make them retreat or flee, where the real casualties are inflicted. Breaking the troops morale was more important than actually killing them. Gunpowder weapons created a cacophonous sound that was unlike any other sound in the world at that time, along with bright flash and plentiful smoke. It was probably a scary sight for opposing armies and they could break just at the first salvo (probably not so with arrows or bolts).

2007-04-27, 11:30 AM

I don't think it was causation. Geoffrey Parker argues that the trace italienne, a new form of fortification that was created to defend specifically against cannon fire, caused war to become a protracted series of sieges. Sieges require large numbers of troops and hence the large armies. That argument doesn't really convince me. Sieges were hardly unique to the 16th century and nor were imposing fortifications. I can accept that the siege became more a more important feature of warfare during this timeframe but would that lead to a mass reorganisation of militaries? I don't see how.

Far more likely in my view is marriage with emerging technology with the growth of professional armies during the latter stages of the HYW. The transition from a feudal to gunpowder structure did "democratise" warfare to the extent that it was possible for members of all classes to become engaged in warfare. This marked a considerable shift from war as the preserve of the nobility. Gunpowder weaponry was a key element of this process.

Dervag

2007-04-27, 11:15 PM

People from all classes had always been able to participate in war, just not on equal terms.

The real change was that armies required large numbers of pikemen and musketeers, at all times. By the 1500s, massed infantry formations were invulnerable to cavalry. Artillery was still in its infancy. Therefore, only massed infantry blocks could break other infantry reliably. So everyone's army needed massed infantry.

Also, Om, the siege became vastly more important. It's hard to overemphasize how much 15th and 16th century warfare revolved around laying siege to fortified strongpoints. Field battles were not the norm, even though every army needed the capability to fight one. The norm was for armies to engage in a lot of maneuvers until the enemy was placed in an impossible position, at which point they would usually either retreat or surrender.

Adlan

2007-04-28, 01:41 AM

Matthew

2007-04-28, 08:35 AM

The real change was that armies required large numbers of pikemen and musketeers, at all times. By the 1500s, massed infantry formations were invulnerable to cavalry. Artillery was still in its infancy. Therefore, only massed infantry blocks could break other infantry reliably. So everyone's army needed massed infantry.

Also, Om, the siege became vastly more important. It's hard to overemphasize how much 15th and 16th century warfare revolved around laying siege to fortified strongpoints. Field battles were not the norm, even though every army needed the capability to fight one. The norm was for armies to engage in a lot of maneuvers until the enemy was placed in an impossible position, at which point they would usually either retreat or surrender.
This is the problem with discussing early modern and medieval warfare. The two disciplines just don't communicate. Medieval Warfare was all about sieges and raiding. Battles were a rarity. Richard the Lionheart, for instance, fought a sum total of three battles during his career (one of which might not even count, according to some historians).
The myth of Medieval Cavalry based warfare raises its head again. The staying power of the Infantry formation increased by degrees, but it was always the case that solid Infantry resisted Cavalry. Twelfth Century Anglo Norman Warfare was characterised by dismounted Knights and Infantry combat. Infantry was always important, but the character of warfare changed. Muskets and Pikes replaced Spears and Bows and the Shield as a personal item all but disappeared.
Partly this was due to changing technology, but social, political and economic factors also contributed. Military history cannot successfully be examined in isolation from its context.

2007-04-28, 11:29 AM

People from all classes had always been able to participate in war, just not on equal terms.I'd very much disagree with that. Prior to the establishment of standing armies loyal to the crown, circa the latter half of the HYW in Western Europe, warfare was almost entirely the preserve of the nobility. If a peasant found himself on the battlefield then it was only through servitude to his feudal master. Even then he would serve solely as fodder.

This began to change somewhat with the growth of mercenary companies and later armies paid by the crown. Both developments gave rise to the professional soldier, albeit one that was still expected to pay for and maintain his own equipment.

To add to what Matthew said about field battles, during the HYW neither side sought to fight the "one big battle". The war was largely fought through the use of raids and garrisons - to weaken the enemy and protect one's own holdings respectively. To illustrate, the three most famous engagements of the war (Crecy, Agincourt and Poitiers) were all fought as the English were leaving French territory.

That not to say that the sieges didn't become more important, but it is hard to argue that there was any major shift in emphasis towards them.

Joran

2007-04-28, 05:08 PM

Against an army which also use gunpowder, They'd not be half as scared.

True, but I would still argue that even against experienced troops, firearms are scarier than crossbows. Also, despite crossbows being more effective, firearms... (I really can't find a better way of putting this) are cooler and probably a mark of prestige if you can outfit your army with them.

Mike_G

2007-04-28, 07:37 PM

True, but I would still argue that even against experienced troops, firearms are scarier than crossbows. Also, despite crossbows being more effective, firearms... (I really can't find a better way of putting this) are cooler and probably a mark of prestige if you can outfit your army with them.

Nah.

The only way to scare experienced troops is make some of them die. Troops very quickly get used to "shock and awe" type stuff and learn what really is dangerous. Troops in modern combat often aren't suppressed by inaccurate automatic fire, but one sniper kill can put a whole platoon on the deck.

Green troops may be frightened, but some smoke and noise that doesn't kill anybody is much easier to ignore than arrows that decimate your company.

Musketry might scare animals, and it may have taken quite a while to train horses to ignore it, but not good veteran soldiers.

Dervag

2007-04-28, 07:56 PM

I take issue with the point about firearms being scary. It is true that there have been several times in history when people have run screaming at the sight and sound of gunpowder. But these are mostly when ill disciplined troops are pressed into a losing battle, or when gunpowder has not been encounterd before.

Against an army which also use gunpowder, They'd not be half as scared.OK, so they won't run screaming after the first volley.

However, each volley of bullets will have a greater psychological effect. Probably the biggest factor is that you can't see them coming. With arrows, you have a chance of dodging, ducking, or blocking because you can see the arrow coming. With bullets, there is no such chance. Moreover, bullets make much more noise, and tend to cause more gruesome injuries.

The net effect is that even when soldiers do not run away, they are much more likely to be frightened or rattled by a volley of bullets than by a volley of arrows.

This is the problem with discussing early modern and medieval warfare. The two disciplines just don't communicate. Medieval Warfare was all about sieges and raiding...
The myth of Medieval Cavalry based warfare raises its head again. The staying power of the Infantry formation increased by degrees, but it was always the case that solid Infantry resisted Cavalry.Oops.

However, my basic point remains: warfare in the 1500s and 1600s was dominated by sieges and the capture of fortified points. Field battles were extremely rare (even if they were no rarer than they had been in medieval times)

I'd very much disagree with that. Prior to the establishment of standing armies loyal to the crown, circa the latter half of the HYW in Western Europe, warfare was almost entirely the preserve of the nobility. If a peasant found himself on the battlefield then it was only through servitude to his feudal master. Even then he would serve solely as fodder.He was, however, undeniably in the war. He might not be armed to anything like the standards of the nobles and their retainers, but he was participating in the war.

Now, if he was a serf or otherwise nonfree peasant, he couldn't sign up to join an army without his noble master's approval; but men of his class did participate in war as peasant levies.

That not to say that the sieges didn't become more important, but it is hard to argue that there was any major shift in emphasis towards them.Another difference was the technology used in the sieges. In a medieval siege, the fortifications were practically impossible for infantry to assault; that was their primary design feature. The whole point of a castle was for the castle to be impossible for infantry to assault without taking devastating losses or using a lot of heavy equipment. The walls were high and very difficult to breach.

Post-medieval fortresses built along the lines of the trace italienne could be assaulted by infantry, though not without extremely heavy losses. Stone walls fell out of favor for earthworks, but earthworks can be climbed, even when they are laden with obstacles.

Furthermore, countersiege operations would themselves require the extensive use of earthworks, which required someone to do the digging, as well as someone to secure the siege weapons (cannons) and prevent them from being captured or spiked by an enemy sallying party. Both these factors made infantry more important for the besieging army.

Nah.

The only way to scare experienced troops is make some of them die.Yes, and a volley of muskets will do that. It may not kill very many, but it will assuredly kill some, and the number of kills will increase rapidly as a function of range.

The maximum range at which vollies were fired was more or less defined by the range at which the volley had a realistic chance of killing some of those experienced troops.

Musketry might scare animals, and it may have taken quite a while to train horses to ignore it, but not good veteran soldiers.Oh yes it will, because musketry kills.

Mike_G

2007-04-28, 11:17 PM

Yes, and a volley of muskets will do that. It may not kill very many, but it will assuredly kill some, and the number of kills will increase rapidly as a function of range.

The maximum range at which vollies were fired was more or less defined by the range at which the volley had a realistic chance of killing some of those experienced troops.

Oh yes it will, because musketry kills.

Your initial point was that muskets were preferred to crossbows because, even though they were less effective at killing, they had a greater psychological effect. I completely disagree.

Yes, bullets kill. If arrows or bolts kill more, they will have more of a demoralizing effect.

Trust me on this. Smoke and flash and noise don't impress you for long. Seeing your comrades die around you does.

The reason guns supplanted bows was simple economics. It was cheaper and easier to train and arm musketeers than good archers. A hundred musketeers, even firing a fairly inaccurate weapon, will do more damage than a handful of longbowmen shooting well.

The ranges Storm Bringer quotes of crossbows being accurate to 500 meters is, quite simply, wrong. While a seige crossbow may be able to send a bolt that far, maybe, it certainly wouldn't be accurate. The M16 isn't accurate to 500 meters against an individual target. The effective range of the crossbow would certainly be under 200 meters, probably under 100 if you wanted a bow that you could reload fairly quickly.

Early muskets weren't all that much worse than the crossbow, and they were cheaper to field. They were inferior to the longbow in its prime, but good archers were harder and harder to get, and much harder to train. Psychology and noise and flash had nothing to do with it. More men putting more death downrange did.

Dervag

2007-04-28, 11:53 PM

Your initial point was that muskets were preferred to crossbows because, even though they were less effective at killing, they had a greater psychological effect. I completely disagree.I can't find this point that I apparently made in the recent past of this thread. I am prepared to believe that I did make that point, but I don't know where I said it. Can you give me the post number?

Speaking for myself right now, I don't think that muskets were significantly less lethal than bows, though I do think that they did produce greater psychological effect.

Yes, bullets kill. If arrows or bolts kill more, they will have more of a demoralizing effect.I contend that psychological effect and the death rate due to an attack are not necessarily the same. For instance, undergoing a sustained artillery barrage, even when no one is killed within the soldier's sight, may cause the soldier to break down entirely. Congreve rockets were fairly effective psychological weapons because of their inaccuracy (they could hit anywhere, so everyone near them on the open field would tend to try to duck or get away), even though that same inaccuracy made them less lethal than artillery.

Trust me on this. Smoke and flash and noise don't impress you for long. Seeing your comrades die around you does.However, when the two are combined, the effect is greater than when either is present singly. A volley of musketry will cause casualties. It will cause gruesome casualties, much more horrifying and shocking than most possible arrow wounds. And, in addition to this, the soldier faces flame, smoke, and the sound of hundreds of bullets whizzing through the air all around them.

I don't think anyone could ever get so accustomed to that that they could take it without flinching, without also becoming hardened enough to face a comparable duration of arrow fire.

Moreover, it should be remembered that for archers to reach the limits of their range, they have to fire along a very high arc. This greatly reduces the archers' accuracy advantage and the rate with which they can kill.

The reason guns supplanted bows was simple economics. It was cheaper and easier to train and arm musketeers than good archers. A hundred musketeers, even firing a fairly inaccurate weapon, will do more damage than a handful of longbowmen shooting well.This is true, but I would argue that there was a psychological effect at least as great as that of bows, even if it was not the only reason for adopting the gun.

Early muskets weren't all that much worse than the crossbow, and they were cheaper to field. They were inferior to the longbow in its prime, but good archers were harder and harder to get, and much harder to train. Psychology and noise and flash had nothing to do with it. More men putting more death downrange did.Again, I'll actually agree that psychology wasn't the main factor, and even that it was a relatively minor factor compared to economics and the desire for more lethal firepower per dollar. But I don't think it's fair to say that guns actually had less psychological effect.

Sundog

2007-04-29, 02:40 AM

I think you guys are ignoring one of the psychological aspects of gunpowder vs. crossbow. I've seen a man shot by a crossbow; an accident at a sporting event. The quarrel embedded itself in the guy's thigh quite nicely and neatly, not much blood, just a nasty wet thunk and the guy's on the ground, screaming in pain.

Now, I haven't seen anyone shot with a matchlock musket, but I've read plenty of accounts. Limbs ripped off, brains splashed to the four winds, torso hits that exsanguinated in under a minute. .50 Balls didn't kill people, they destroyed human bodies. I can certainly see people being significantly more demoralized by having to walk through the spilled intestines of their comrades than by having to step over somebody with a feathered shaft sticking out of his chest.

Cyborg Pirate

2007-04-29, 03:48 AM

Belkarseviltwin

2007-04-29, 02:23 PM

Subotei

2007-04-29, 02:35 PM

Something that may be interesting: I can't remember where I saw or read it, but IIRC, during the Zulu wars, the british troops had apparently reported that being under fire by zulu arrows was a hell lot more terrifying then being shot at with guns. Something to do with the whistling sounds of incoming arrows.

Quite possibly because it was the first time they'd ever faced incoming arrows?

Interesting debate - early guns must have been better than bows in some respect or they would never have caught on. To me it must have to something to do with penetrative power. Has anyone got any data on the comparative striking power of early muskets vs bows?

Dervag

2007-04-29, 03:48 PM

Although I am sure such data exist, I doubt that anyone who tried to collect them was unbiased enough to give both guns and bows a fair shake.

Winterking

2007-04-29, 06:14 PM

Interesting tidbit about 16th/17th-century land warfare--as others have posted, sieges became hugely important, primarily because of cannons. Cannons could win battles. But cannons couldn't move very well, so they needed fortifactions; also, you needed earthworks to defend against cannons.

There were actually quite a few field battles of the early gunpowder age that, despite both armies facing eachother well away from fortified cities, revolved around fortifactions, using seige tactics. One army would build a set of earthworks for their cannons, the other side would take it away; rinse, repeat.

Actually, one of the main reasons (as far as I know) for the adoption of early firearms in place of bows and arrows is that firearms are relatively easy to use. Longbows (the source of the pro-bow evidence being quoted here), required a lifetime of practice to use effectively. Crossbows took a lot of strength to reload--the heavy ones (again, the source, I think, of most of this discussion's evidence) required a windlass to winch the cord back. Aquebuses and similar firearms, though, could be used by Humphrey the Weakling Conscriptee just as well, and Humphrey's wages are lower. In addition, with musketeers primarily providing support against light troops (they were often attached to huge pike blocks, which could themselves handle heavily armored troops, but were vulnerable to skirmishing troops) and cavalry, the ability of a gun's noise and smoke could be disproportionately effective.

Fhaolan

2007-04-29, 11:45 PM

My wife bought a crossbow recently (she's always wanted one). My Dad was visiting yesterday and wanted to see some of the stuff we do, so we were playing around with it and I was seriously disapointed.

On occasion, I have been know to pull an 80lb siegebow. I have a fair idea of how difficult it is to use, and the range and accuracy of such a weapon, even with limited training.

This particular crossbow has a pull probably about 150lbs as it takes me both hands (and a foot in the stirrup) to [okay... fine... let's say 'rooster'] it. I can't be more accurate than that because I don't have a drawscale strong enough to measure it.

The bolt flew about 80-90 feet, and then went squirrelly. It was as if the quarrel (tip) was still flying straight, but the fletched end started to spiral around crazily. I've never seen this behaviour out of an arrow before, so I was very confused. The bolt flew about another 40 feet or so before hitting the ground. Given the pull of the bow, I had set up the target at 60 yards thinking I'd hit it easily. Moving closer, it had impressive penetration power at that 80 foot mark, but beyond that the spiral flipping of the bolt ruined the impact.

Has anyone else experimented with period crossbows? Have they seen this strange behaviour, or have we just got ahold of bolts not tuned to the crossbow? I know that arrows have to be matched to the strength of the bow or you get weird behavior (archer's paradox), but I was given the impression that crossbows weren't as twitchy about such things.

Wehrkind

2007-04-30, 12:06 AM

Looking around online, I can find some references to bolts needing to be of a mass suitable for the strength of the prod to get optimal kinetic energy (like a normal bow) but looking at an online store, I don't see any notes in commercial carbon bolts mentioning weight etc., so... I don't know what to tell you. I suspect you are correct that bolts should work like arrows, since all the same forces are in effect.

Adlan

2007-04-30, 01:53 AM

Archers Paradox is the arrow flying left or right along the vertical, due to the way an arrow flexes when released. Even with center shot bows (recurves and compunds) it's a problem, although more pronounced than in a bow without an inset arrow rest.

What happens is when released, the arrow flexes, and the point bends around the arrow (shooting right handed, the arrow flexes around to the right of the bow), then as it is comming off the arrow, it flexes back the other way. It continues to vibrate and flex for a few yars after it leaves the bow, in the same pattern.

The arrows spine is concerned with getting the arrow to fly straight when it leaves the bow, and to not end up flying left or right. If the arrow is too flexible for the bow, then it will fly right, and if it is too stiff, then it flys left. Archers error on the side of too stiff, because the error to the left is more predictable than an error to the right.

If you see people cant their bows (hold the bow at an angel when they shoot), what they may be doing (possibly without realising) is reducing the effect of archers paradox. Canting the bow translates some of the archers paradoz into vertical error.

I've shot and seen shot a fair few arrows, and never seen the symptoms you describe, but it dosn't sound like archers paradox.

I'd inspect the quarrels, what are the fletchings, Plastic vanes might be deforming in flight and causing this, as might be any imperfection in the surface of the arrow.

I'm also assuming it's useing field points, ocassionally improperly tuned broadheads will cause this sort of thing.

Wehrkind

2007-04-30, 02:07 AM

If you figure out what is doing it, post it here. I am irrationally curious about this for some reason. Well, for no reason I suppose, since if I had a reason it wouldn't seem so irrational.

Dervag

2007-04-30, 03:33 AM

I'm thinking about it from a physics standpoint and I don't know what's happening either. This one is a real stumper.

Is the crossbow cocked fully when you fire it?

Stephen_E

2007-04-30, 07:06 AM

The only time I've heard of this was in a fantasy novel (a Raymonf Fiest novel IIRC) where someone was describing a Hv Crossbow as having lots of punch at close range but been inaccurate and quickly losing its penetration beyond short range.

I thought this sounded strange at the time, since I'd never heard anything like this about crossbows, and authors vary a lot in the accuracy of their weapons/combat descriptions. Hearing you talk about it I can't help wondering if the author had come across this behaviour himself and decided it was standard.

Stephen

Fhaolan

2007-04-30, 08:15 AM

Mike_G

2007-04-30, 12:50 PM

Mike_G

2007-04-30, 01:11 PM

I can't find this point that I apparently made in the recent past of this thread. I am prepared to believe that I did make that point, but I don't know where I said it. Can you give me the post number?

Actually, I apologize. Joran initially made the point about the flash and crash being the big selling point. My first reply was to him, then you replied to that reply and things went as they went.

When he said that "despite crossbows being more effective than firearms..." and went on to propose shock value as a reason for their adoption.

I maintain that one gets used to anything that doesn't kill you. Within reason. WWI artillery barrages cannot be compared to a company of matchlock men. Musketry, especially old black powder musketry, isn't particularly loud. And noise way over there isn't scary. The scariest sound that doesn't kill you is the snap as a round passes by your ear, whispering to you of your mortality.

I've treated a lot of different wounds a a Paramedic, including knife, machete and bullet wounds. Low velocity musket balls, wouldn't produce the horrific exit wounds that high velocity rifle rounds do, or have the shattering effect on bone. Mass is nice in a projectile, but velocity is the killer.

Musket armed troops, were, in fact, some of the best at not running of all troops of various eras of warfare, since their usefulness on the field required them to funtions as a unit, not a bunch of individuals. The musket was only effective when fired en masse and the bayonet won't keep out cavalry unless your buddies to either side of you present theirs as well. Troops in the napoleonic era routinely took much worse casulaties before breaking, expressed as a percentage of a unit, than those of the pre gunpowder period. Most medieval soldiers were killed in the retreat, most dead at Waterloo lay in formation.

Yes, artillery that shakes the ground and leaves men with burst eardrums can demoralize soldiers. Yes, rockets are scary. Most of the early use of firearms that deeply impressed the enemy and caused a retreat was generally the use of artillery by the colonial powers against indigenous troops with no experience of such weapons. European soldiers stood and died where they were told.

Belkarseviltwin

2007-04-30, 01:54 PM

AI've treated alot of different wounds a a Paramedic, including knife, machete and bullet wounds. Low velocity musket balls, wouldn't produce the horrific exit wounds that high velocity rifle rounds do, or have the shattering effect on bone. Mass is nice in a projectile, but velocity is th killer.

True- from 1/2mv^2. However, a musket ball goes a good deal faster than an arrow...

Mike_G

2007-04-30, 02:04 PM

True- from 1/2mv^2. However, a musket ball goes a good deal faster than an arrow...

Agreed, but I'm not comparing it to an arrow. I'm attempting to refute the often annecdotal claims of horrific musket ball wounds. I've seen modern weapon wounds, and I'm confident that automatic 5.56 mm rounds moving at the speeds they do rip up flesh far worse than lumbering old msuket balls, even the .69 cal ones. Shattered bones, exit wounds the size of a pie plate, burst heads, all these happen with high velocity ammo. I'd be surprised if you could do it with a 15th century matchlock.

Arrows caused some damage in removal, though, and the shape of the head could cause more damage, but probably a musket ball wound would be uglier. Just not uglier enough to turn stalwart soldiers to fleeing, though.

Cyborg Pirate

2007-04-30, 02:45 PM

Agreed, but I'm not comparing it to an arrow. I'm attempting to refute the often annecdotal claims of horrific musket ball wounds. I've seen modern weapon wounds, and I'm confident that automatic 5.56 mm rounds moving at the speeds they do rip up flesh far worse than lumbering old msuket balls, even the .69 cal ones. Shattered bones, exit wounds the size of a pie plate, burst heads, all these happen with high velocity ammo. I'd be surprised if you could do it with a 15th century matchlock.

Arrows caused some damage in removal, though, and the shape of the head could cause more damage, but probably a musket ball wound would be uglier. Just not uglier enough to turn stalwart soldiers to fleeing, though.

I remember having seen a bone that was hit by a musketbal on discovery. The ball had lodged itself firmly into the bone. While the ball lodging itself into the bone might have done some ugly things to the leg in question, one thing was certain: That legbone wasn't shattered nor horribly broken in hideous ways. If musketballs could blow limbs off, that bone should've been pulverised.

So, evidence says you're probably right Mike.

Adlan

2007-04-30, 03:08 PM

Okay, I might have something, but I'm not sure yet.

Dervag: Yeah, it's fully drawn. It appears to release smoothly, but I'd need a high-speed camera to be absolutely sure.

Here's what I found. Period bolts were rarely if ever fletched with feathers, aparantly. They usually used leather fletching according to the one source I found. The one bolt I have (borrowed it from someone, because the crossbow didn't come with bolts) has feather fletching. So, I examined the fletching more closely. I noticed that on one side is missing a few spines, and appears to be canted just fractionally more than the other. With a casual glance you can't tell, you have to look *really* close to notice the imperfections. Of course, the missing spines might be from my test shots going so badly.

So, what I'm going to do is make a half-dozen of my own bolts, with leather fletchings. Anybody got a source for quarrels for a 1/2" shaft? [I can't find tuning info for bolts, but the few sources I've read that have bolt diagrams have approx. 1/2" dia shafts, so I'm making an assumption.]

That will Do it, an inconcistant flteching will affect how your flight stabilises, and a minor imperfection will cause it to destabilse furthur on. I've never had arrows damage the fletchings from passing through my bow. Lots of damage when I miss, but none from when I have a clean hit on the target.

I Have no clue where to get the materials to make a cross bow bolt, there must be some places (try 3 rivers archery), all I can say is perpare to get sucked in. First it's a crossbow and making the bolts for that, then you might get a compound. So soon You'll be with a traditional bow, home made arrows and knapping flint arrowheads.

I do know lots of people who make their own arrows (I'm one them), working in wood, with a handmade bow, it's the only way to get them spined just perfect. Working in advanced carbon fibre, it's the only way to get them all concistant.

What you'll need is a jig and... Well lots more stuff. I can recommend archery talk as having lots of members. But I can really recommend Bow Hunting talk (http://www.bowhuntingtalk.com/index.php) as the friendlist site around, with plenty of really knowledgeable blokes. Not many crossbowhunters, but one guy in Particular to ask (I'll PM him and see if he has any advice for you).

Sorry for gushing, hope thats some help.

Joran

2007-04-30, 03:09 PM

When he said that "despite crossbows being more effective than firearms..." and went on to propose shock value as a reason for their adoption.

I actually was just trying to think of a reason why guns might be more effective than crossbows at ranged firepower; not actually trying to say that the shock value was the reason why they were adopted. My apologies if that was what I implied, but I was trying to think in another direction that may not have been addressed. I agree with everything said so far about guns being easier to train with; although, I don't have any idea if they were cheaper.

My guess would actually be that guns were a mark of prestige and that cannon were already more effective than other siege weapons that it didn't make much sense not to extend it further on into small scale firearms.

Most medieval soldiers were killed in the retreat, most dead at Waterloo lay in formation.

Only when drill and discipline took hold. By the Napoleonic Wars, troops were drilled and marched in formation to perfection; taught to fire in salvos and form square when approached by calvary. However, when the firearm was just being introduced into warfare, before the Italian Wars, I don't believe that the drills and discipline had taken place yet.

Raum

2007-04-30, 04:14 PM

Fhaolan

2007-04-30, 05:17 PM

That will Do it, an inconcistant flteching will affect how your flight stabilises, and a minor imperfection will cause it to destabilse furthur on. I've never had arrows damage the fletchings from passing through my bow. Lots of damage when I miss, but none from when I have a clean hit on the target.

I Have no clue where to get the materials to make a cross bow bolt, there must be some places (try 3 rivers archery), all I can say is perpare to get sucked in. First it's a crossbow and making the bolts for that, then you might get a compound. So soon You'll be with a traditional bow, home made arrows and knapping flint arrowheads.

I do know lots of people who make their own arrows (I'm one them), working in wood, with a handmade bow, it's the only way to get them spined just perfect. Working in advanced carbon fibre, it's the only way to get them all concistant.

What you'll need is a jig and... Well lots more stuff. I can recommend archery talk as having lots of members. But I can really recommend Bow Hunting talk (http://www.bowhuntingtalk.com/index.php) as the friendlist site around, with plenty of really knowledgeable blokes. Not many crossbowhunters, but one guy in Particular to ask (I'll PM him and see if he has any advice for you).

Sorry for gushing, hope thats some help.

I've been doing regular archery for many years (We've got an 80lb siegebow, a 55lb longbow, a 40lb mongol-style horsebow, several modern bows, and now the crossbow. My wife does horseback archery on occasion, while I ground-pound.), but this will be my first attempt at making my own arrow/bolts. I need to make my own arrows for the siegebow anyway, as I can't seem to buy them with enough spine without spending a true fortune.

I'm contemplating turning a brass pile on my grandfather's little metal lathe that I inherited, and using it as a master for making molds. But before I go that far, I need to know how heavy the pile should be for a bolt, and I can't seem to find that kind of information anywhere.

Stephen_E

2007-04-30, 05:58 PM

ActuallyMusket armed troops, were, in fact, some of the best at not running of all troops of various eras of warfare, since their usefulness on the field required them to funtions as a unit, not a bunch of individuals. The musket was only effective when fired en masse and the bayonet won't keep out cavalry unless your buddies to either side of you present theirs as well. Troops in the napoleonic era routinely took much worse casulaties before breaking, expressed as a percentage of a unit, than those of the pre gunpowder period. Most medieval soldiers were killed in the retreat, most dead at Waterloo lay in formation.

As has been pointed out drilling to do just that, stand and die, was something that Napleonic armies had a lot more than medieval.
I suspect another reason for the disparity in where the deaths occurred is that TTBOMK in medival warfare it is reasonably difficult to kill someone who is fighting back. In Napoleonic combat it's makes no difference whether someone is shooting back or running. The musketball kills just as easy either way. Also AFAIK breaking wasn't particuly well related to casulties. Basically armies break when for whatever reason they decide they've lost.

So you have your mediaval army fights for "x" hours in which it's quite difficult for the enemy to kill you, and then you break and for "y" minutes of pursuit the enemy chop you in your defenseless back (not to mention that these armies would probably have higher ratios of cavalry, and running from cavalry is really bad news).

You have your Napoleonic army fighting for "x" hours, where they literally standing targets for the enemy fire, and when they break and run, if anything they're more difficult targets for the enemy shooting, and the enemy probably weren't adjacent to them when they started to run, and even if they were, the enemy may well just decide to shoot them in the back rather than chase them, stabbing them in the back. (and as noted, the Napoleonic army probably had less Cav to do the pursuit business).

In short I suspect the casulty ratio differences weren't that strongly connected musket armies requiring more casulties before they broke.

Stephen

Wehrkind

2007-04-30, 07:19 PM

Another thing to keep in mind is that fighting in a medieval army with melee weapons is significantly more tiring than fighting with a gun of some sort. You are probably carrying the same amount of kit appropriate for whether you are striking from a camp or on the march, but swinging weapons and running around in a swirling melee is much more exhausting than marching and firing. I suspect that has a lot to do with why medieval armies broke with fewer losses, as getting that tired and not feeling as though you are winning, or worse seeing fresh enemy entering the fight, you are very likely to decide it can't be won, and try to hoof it.

Dervag

2007-05-01, 01:44 AM

I maintain that one gets used to anything that doesn't kill you. Within reason. WWI artillery barrages cannot be compared to a company of matchlock men. Musketry, especially old black powder musketry, isn't particularly loud. And noise way over there isn't scary. The scariest sound that doesn't kill you is the snap as a round passes by your ear, whispering to you of your mortality.All true, but it should be remembered that these musket vollies were delivered at quite close range, and that each volley did send a lot of rounds snapping past you. The whole point of volley fire is to throw a hail of bullets at an entire enemy formation, which tends to have suppressive effects on the entire formation.

I've treated a lot of different wounds a a Paramedic, including knife, machete and bullet wounds. Low velocity musket balls, wouldn't produce the horrific exit wounds that high velocity rifle rounds do, or have the shattering effect on bone. Mass is nice in a projectile, but velocity is the killer.Low velocity musket balls did shatter bones. It's a well-established fact. That's why they had to do so many amputations; a musket hit to a human limb would typically cause so much damage that nothing short of a modern hospital could save the limb.

Yes, artillery that shakes the ground and leaves men with burst eardrums can demoralize soldiers. Yes, rockets are scary. Most of the early use of firearms that deeply impressed the enemy and caused a retreat was generally the use of artillery by the colonial powers against indigenous troops with no experience of such weapons. European soldiers stood and died where they were told.There were a lot of battles where infantry did break. This usually happened when one infantry formation attacked another infantry formation backed with artillery. The defenders' fire could frequently cause enough casualties to break an opposing infantry formation.

Psychological effects of artillery and musketry are/were cumulative. Only the lowest-morale troops will break in response to the first volley, but what about the tenth or the twentieth?

Adlan

2007-05-01, 05:21 AM

I've been doing regular archery for many years (We've got an 80lb siegebow, a 55lb longbow, a 40lb mongol-style horsebow, several modern bows, and now the crossbow. My wife does horseback archery on occasion, while I ground-pound.), but this will be my first attempt at making my own arrow/bolts. I need to make my own arrows for the siegebow anyway, as I can't seem to buy them with enough spine without spending a true fortune.

I'm contemplating turning a brass pile on my grandfather's little metal lathe that I inherited, and using it as a master for making molds. But before I go that far, I need to know how heavy the pile should be for a bolt, and I can't seem to find that kind of information anywhere.

I've been playing with Bows since my Boy hood, but Only got really serious a few years back. At the moment I'm saving up, and working up to an 80lb Warbow and then hopefully even higher (I shoot a 50lb Longbow at the moment). I've been making my own bows and arrows again since my boy hood aswell, and finally lernt to do it well last year. Manufactured Arrows are nothing in terms of consistancy and reliability when it comes to making traditional arrows. And although with Alums and Carbons you are better off store bought unless you know what your doing, all the really good archers I know suggest making your own.

Join the Forum, and Post up a thread, or PM a fellow called Rancid Crabtree, he is a DIY genius (Knapping, stringmaking, Bowmaking, Leather work, custom arrows, everything he even makes his own knives.) and he owns and has built quite a few crossbow bolts. I explained your problem about finding info, and He can tell you, but needs info such as Draw weight, what materials you want to work in and such like that I can't give, otherwise I'd just pass on the info.

I belive, from what I've seen online, that 100-150grain should do, but ask R.C. not me, he actually will know.

Matthew

2007-05-01, 07:21 AM

Only when drill and discipline took hold. By the Napoleonic Wars, troops were drilled and marched in formation to perfection; taught to fire in salvos and form square when approached by calvary. However, when the firearm was just being introduced into warfare, before the Italian Wars, I don't believe that the drills and discipline had taken place yet.
Well, it's hard to say this for sure. Certainly the extent and level to which armies were drilled and trained was greater in the early modern period, but we shouldn't underestimate Medieval Armies either. Certainly there was significant formalised training involved in Hellenistic and Roman Armies and, yet, the majority of casualties were inflicted when one side broke and ran. The estimated average casualty rates for Hoplite encounters are something like 5% for the Victor and 15% for the Vanquished. Obviously this doesn't apply across the board, though, and there are numerous counter examples.
The Spartans are a good example of a reputedly unbreakable foe breaking in the face of sustained casualties from ranged weapons (I'm thinking during the Peloponesian Wars), whilst the Theban 'Sacred Band' is an example of a force willing to fight to the last man.
Casualty rates could be huge without an actual pursuit, as at Cannae, but it's true to say that panic and break down of discipline seem to always be the primary cause of defeat and casualties.
Of course, those are Ancient examples, not Medieval ones, but we don't have to look far to find Medieval armies putting up with sustained casualties, Hastings for instance or pretty much any successful engagement during the crusades. Medieval Armies were certainly less disciplined than Ancient ones, but it is a matter of degrees (isn't everything?)

As has been pointed out drilling to do just that, stand and die, was something that Napleonic armies had a lot more than medieval.
I suspect another reason for the disparity in where the deaths occurred is that TTBOMK in medival warfare it is reasonably difficult to kill someone who is fighting back. In Napoleonic combat it's makes no difference whether someone is shooting back or running. The musketball kills just as easy either way. Also AFAIK breaking wasn't particuly well related to casulties. Basically armies break when for whatever reason they decide they've lost.
Interesting, sounds about right. The psychology of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern warfare is hard to appreciate. Early Modern Armies I find it especially hard to understand. The reputed response of British Troops to facing Rifles during the American Revolution is particularly telling, I think.

Another thing to keep in mind is that fighting in a medieval army with melee weapons is significantly more tiring than fighting with a gun of some sort. You are probably carrying the same amount of kit appropriate for whether you are striking from a camp or on the march, but swinging weapons and running around in a swirling melee is much more exhausting than marching and firing. I suspect that has a lot to do with why medieval armies broke with fewer losses, as getting that tired and not feeling as though you are winning, or worse seeing fresh enemy entering the fight, you are very likely to decide it can't be won, and try to hoof it.
There is an interesting article on the subject of fatigue and the nitty gritty of what happens during battles that is worth a read: The Roman Face of Battle. It's a really interesting field of study.

There were a lot of battles where infantry [I]did break. This usually happened when one infantry formation attacked another infantry formation backed with artillery. The defenders' fire could frequently cause enough casualties to break an opposing infantry formation.

Psychological effects of artillery and musketry are/were cumulative. Only the lowest-morale troops will break in response to the first volley, but what about the tenth or the twentieth?
Yeah, what little study I did of the Early Modern period (and what I have read by way of analogue) suggests to me that, even at this time, troops tended to break most often when charged. Bayonets may have had more psychological impact than Musket Fire....

Dervag

2007-05-01, 07:44 AM

Yeah, what little study I did of the Early Modern period (and what I have read by way of analogue) suggests to me that, even at this time, troops tended to break most often when charged. Bayonets may have had more psychological impact than Musket Fire....OK, I think it works both ways. 'Softer' units would be more likely to break when charged. But almost any unit can be broken by fire when it's on the offensive.

Mike_G

2007-05-01, 03:44 PM

As promised, here the reply from my friend who builds bows and bolts.:

"Have seen this problem caused by poorly fletched bolts, and seen it caused by cracked or loose staves. In most cases the defects were subtle, but the effect was dramatic. I'd recommend inspecting the stave for symmetry when drawn. If that looks good, then try a few bolts which have flown true from another bow. Ensure that the number of vanes is appropriate for the crossbow; most traditional crossbows require bolts with two vanes. He is correct in that crossbows are generally not finicky. "

My wife bought a crossbow recently (she's always wanted one). My Dad was visiting yesterday and wanted to see some of the stuff we do, so we were playing around with it and I was seriously disapointed.

On occasion, I have been know to pull an 80lb siegebow. I have a fair idea of how difficult it is to use, and the range and accuracy of such a weapon, even with limited training.

This particular crossbow has a pull probably about 150lbs as it takes me both hands (and a foot in the stirrup) to [okay... fine... let's say 'rooster'] it. I can't be more accurate than that because I don't have a drawscale strong enough to measure it.

The bolt flew about 80-90 feet, and then went squirrelly. It was as if the quarrel (tip) was still flying straight, but the fletched end started to spiral around crazily. I've never seen this behaviour out of an arrow before, so I was very confused. The bolt flew about another 40 feet or so before hitting the ground. Given the pull of the bow, I had set up the target at 60 yards thinking I'd hit it easily. Moving closer, it had impressive penetration power at that 80 foot mark, but beyond that the spiral flipping of the bolt ruined the impact.

Has anyone else experimented with period crossbows? Have they seen this strange behaviour, or have we just got ahold of bolts not tuned to the crossbow? I know that arrows have to be matched to the strength of the bow or you get weird behavior (archer's paradox), but I was given the impression that crossbows weren't as twitchy about such things.

Mike_G

2007-05-01, 04:07 PM

All true, but it should be remembered that these musket vollies were delivered at quite close range, and that each volley did send a lot of rounds snapping past you. The whole point of volley fire is to throw a hail of bullets at an entire enemy formation, which tends to have suppressive effects on the entire formation.

Low velocity musket balls did shatter bones. It's a well-established fact. That's why they had to do so many amputations; a musket hit to a human limb would typically cause so much damage that nothing short of a modern hospital could save the limb.

Don't confuse bad medicine with horrific wounds. The explosives and high velocity rounds of today produce horrible wounds, but typically only one in ten casualties is killed, thanks largely to modern medicine.

Amputations during the black powder era were very often the result of infection, caused by totally unsanitary operating conditions, or the result of extended tissue ischemia secondary to long, long "scene to definitive care" times.

Yes, a musket ball can break bones. The real notable examples of damaged limbs come from American Civil War accounts, where muskets had evolved quite a bit, and the tight fitting Minie ball fired from a rifled musket is the biggest culprit. A loose fitting ball fired from a smoothbore matchlock that had a tough time punching through a buff coat will not shatter your femur.

Even if you do have your leg or arm broken in several pieces, the wound doesn't look horrific to the guy standing next to you. I've set broken limbs, including compound fractures, that looked ...odd, but only horrible if you stopped and stared, realizing that that third ankle probably doesn't belong.

Cannon balls or grapeshot would likely turn infantry to hamburger, but the gruesome effect of low velocity bullets is vastly overstated.

There were a lot of battles where infantry did break. This usually happened when one infantry formation attacked another infantry formation backed with artillery. The defenders' fire could frequently cause enough casualties to break an opposing infantry formation.

Because the fire killed a lot of people.

I'm not saying musketry wasn't effective. I'm saying it only made good troops break when it killed bunches of them. Noise and flash mean nothing to blooded troops. Hell, you can train horses not to flinch at gunfire, and they are made of nerves.

As Matthew posted, the very quiet cold, pointy steel of a line of bayonets stretching out at you, accelerating into a charge, has broken many, many, many more units than a little noise ever did.

At Waterloo, the French columns advanced through heavy artillery fire into close range musketry from a foe concealed behind the crest of a hill, and, despite the effect that must have had, only broke when charged with good old fashioned cold steel.

Adlan

2007-05-01, 05:04 PM

And when faced with walking up hill into endless British firepower from the lines of men used, which allowed for everyone to draw a bead, rather than only the edges, as with the french column. AFAIR

Wehrkind

2007-05-02, 12:42 AM

I think there is probably a difference to be kept in mind when considering the fire arms use of the early modern period and their use in the late medieval when they started to become dominant. I might not be out of line at all to consider some extra shock value, for while the "good" troops likely wouldn't care much, lesser quality troops (the non-proffessionals) would likely be somewhat suprised by this new and fearsome weapon. Not so much because it was better, but because it was new and outside their comfort zone.

By way of an anaology, I offer two situations. The first is the poison gas in WWI previously mentioned. It hardly killed anyone in relative terms, but the very uncertainty of it scared the devil out of troops. While every infantry man knew what the gas was, how it worked, and what they were to do, the very idea was so alien to them that they were prone to disbelief and fear. The very nature of a completely indiscriminant killer was terribly odd.
The second example is many modern folk's aversion to guns. I would go so far as to say everyone has a general idea of how guns work, which end the bullet comes out of etc. Show an adult who has never held one though, and they are distinctly uncomfortable. The first thing they do is hold it like it will bite them. The second thing they do is point the muzzle at someone, sometimes themselves. They have all seen guns before, but not having experience using them themselves leaves them jittery and stupid.

That's my take on it at least. I suspect that someday lasers or something similarly wierd will take to the battle field, and we will see enemies scared irrationally by them, despite their relative effectiveness. "It's so scary! You don't even hear it shooting, just silence, then Jamal has a smouldering hole in his chest!"

Norsesmithy

2007-05-02, 02:20 AM

Except laser warfare won't be silent, because a laser powerful enough to cause serious damage to flesh or armour at farther than knife ranges will cause the kind of heat expansion and contration of air that lightning does to cause thunder.

But I don't think that laser weapons will become standard infantry weapons in the next century or so, the only advantage they have over a good old fasioned slug thrower is a lack of balistic drop, and except in extreme range sniping, that isn't a truly limiting factor in combat.

Wehrkind

2007-05-02, 03:01 AM

Subotei

2007-05-02, 04:22 AM

Yea, it is more likely to make a laser targeted lighting bolt thrower than a damaging laser useful for combat.

That wasn't really the point though. The point is that when you grow up with and expect A, Not A is pretty unnerving.

Personally, I am waiting for the bolter to replace the typical rifle. Bullets are cool, but they do not explode a fraction of a second after impact. Give me my power armor, bolter and chain sword; I am ready to smite down the enemies of Man!

Mmmm... high energy laser creates a line-to-target of ionised air, split second later the power pack discharges artifical lightning straight to the target. I like it, but it will totally reveal your position. I can't wait for gauss rifle technology myself - powerful, silent, no muzzle flash....:smallsmile:

Cyborg Pirate

2007-05-02, 05:03 AM

I can't wait for gauss rifle technology myself - powerful, silent, no muzzle flash....:smallsmile:

Powerful - No more powerful then current rifles, considering that any soldier carrying one will still have to deal with the kickback. If a soldier fires a hand-held gauss rifle that can blast through 3 tanks, he's going to have to go search the area for his arm and shoulder after pulling the trigger.

Silent - No, not at all. The projectile is still breaking the sound barrier, which means there's still quite a bang.

Stephen_E

2007-05-02, 05:54 AM

But I don't think that laser weapons will become standard infantry weapons in the next century or so, the only advantage they have over a good old fasioned slug thrower is a lack of balistic drop, and except in extreme range sniping, that isn't a truly limiting factor in combat.

Depends on location.
Low Gravity or Freefall combat, + airless or thin atmosphere envioriments all have significant advantages for laser weapons.

Stephen

Dervag

2007-05-02, 06:20 AM

I can see a conventional, exploding-cartridge projectile weapon (or any other projectile weapon) being a problem in free fall because in free fall there's nothing to stop the recoil from pushing you off into the air. But how would an airless or low-gravity environment be a disadvantage for conventional projectile weapons?

As for the gauss weapon question, Cyborg Pirate is right. No popular shoulder weapon is ever going to deliver much more momentum than, say, a 30.06 rifle cartridge. Momentum, mass times velocity, is what determines the recoil of a gun. It's imaginable that people would start firing really small rounds that travel extremely fast and carry a lot of kinetic energy, but at a certain point the high kinetic energy is just wasted on overpenetration.

Also, it should be pointed out that most high-power rail gun systems currently under development magnetically accelerate a propellant gas, which means that they have many of the same 'flash and crack' effects as conventional firearms.

Stephen_E

2007-05-02, 06:49 AM

I can see a conventional, exploding-cartridge projectile weapon (or any other projectile weapon) being a problem in free fall because in free fall there's nothing to stop the recoil from pushing you off into the air. But how would an airless or low-gravity environment be a disadvantage for conventional projectile weapons?

Low gravity has many of the problems of freefall. Recoil is a sod.
Also factor in that lpw grav generally involves short horizons and smaller "worlds". You spray of some bulletto suppress the enemy. Sometime later the bullets hit your forces in the back after having orbited the world/planetoid you're on. Decent gravity and atmosphere (the 2 tend to go together) make sure those pesky bullets that don't hit the enemy at least hit the ground rather quickly.

Airlessness: - Just checking, do the propellants in modern firearms provide all their own oxygen ecetre? Will gas ejection systems work properly in a vacum? Will vacum wielding affect the moving part in a gun? Basically gun designers make guns based on a variety of assumptions, which include the assumption that they're going to be fired in an atmosphere vaguely similiar to what you find at sea level Terra.

Stephen

Stephen_E

2007-05-02, 07:09 AM

Powerful - No more powerful then current rifles, considering that any soldier carrying one will still have to deal with the kickback. If a soldier fires a hand-held gauss rifle that can blast through 3 tanks, he's going to have to go search the area for his arm and shoulder after pulling the trigger.

Silent - No, not at all. The projectile is still breaking the sound barrier, which means there's still quite a bang.

Re: Recoil. While modern firearms generally work on the simplest level that the equal and opposite force of the bullet is applied to the firearm, this isn't actually written in stone. I'd be very surprised if by the time they produce infantry Gauss weapons they can't make the "for each force there is an equal and opposite force somewhere" be somewhere other than the soldier using the weapon.

Stephen

Cyborg Pirate

2007-05-02, 07:13 AM

Re: Recoil. While modern firearms generally work on the simplest level that the equal and opposite force of the bullet is applied to the firearm, this isn't actually written in stone. I'd be very surprised if by the time they produce infantry Gauss weapons they can't make the "for each force there is an equal and opposite force somewhere" be somewhere other than the soldier using the weapon.

Stephen

...like how? And even if such a thing were possible, how could it ever be made efficient?

And Stephen, shooting on a small, airless, low-gravity planet doesn't mean your bullets will come back from behind. At most, it means they'll leave orbit.

Stephen_E

2007-05-02, 08:06 AM

...like how? And even if such a thing were possible, how could it ever be made efficient?

And Stephen, shooting on a small, airless, low-gravity planet doesn't mean your bullets will come back from behind. At most, it means they'll leave orbit.

A Guass Rifle might be ables to dump the recoil into the magnetic field of the planet it's on. Also you could possibly convert it to heat, or even convert it into energy to partially recharge the rifle. It's a while since I did any physics but I recall there are cute tricks you can play with magnetic fields. I remember the one where if you have a sattelite in orbit and have a conducter hanging above and below the satelite you can run a charge along it and speed up or slow down, with the Earth doing the reverse. As for how to make it efficient? Well if you've managed to get a portable power source sufficient to power your Gauss Rifle, and get all the magnetic field works small and light enough to make a easily portable package, getting the recoil problem licked might not be that big a deal.

Re: Small LG airless, or low pressure world. There's a large gap between ground out quickly and escape velocity. Soldiers have enough to worry about without having to worry about their small arms fire hitting something 100kms or more away, or yes, if you're VERY unlucky, having your own bullets come all the way back around and shoot you in the back. Friendly fire is ugly enough at the best of times, but having your own bullet hit you would be truly foul (and murphy's law would indicate that sooner or later it would happen).

Stephen

Raum

2007-05-02, 09:19 AM

Re: Small LG airless, or low pressure world. There's a large gap between ground out quickly and escape velocity. Soldiers have enough to worry about without having to worry about their small arms fire hitting something 100kms or more away, or yes, if you're VERY unlucky, having your own bullets come all the way back around and shoot you in the back. Friendly fire is ugly enough at the best of times, but having your own bullet hit you would be truly foul (and murphy's law would indicate that sooner or later it would happen).There are an awful lot of factors needed for the scenario to occur:
The world / asteroid must be airless. (An atmosphere would degrade the projectile’s orbit causing it to hit dirt.)
The world / asteroid must be smooth. (A range of mountains, or even hills the height of a man, would prevent an orbit low enough to hit yourself.)
The mass of the world / asteroid must be specific based on the projectile’s velocity. (Your shot has to reach orbital velocity but not escape velocity.)
The vertical angle of your shot must be exact for it to orbit. (Not just orbit, but orbit at an altitude low enough to hit yourself.)
The horizontal angle of your shot must bisect the globe. (This isn’t strictly a requirement, but the math for orbits not bisecting the globe gets complex.)
Finally, you have to be a damned good shot...or damned unlucky.

Dervag

2007-05-02, 09:51 AM

Low gravity has many of the problems of freefall. Recoil is a sod.

Also factor in that lpw grav generally involves short horizons and smaller "worlds". You spray of some bulletto suppress the enemy. Sometime later the bullets hit your forces in the back after having orbited the world/planetoid you're on. Decent gravity and atmosphere (the 2 tend to go together) make sure those pesky bullets that don't hit the enemy at least hit the ground rather quickly.I suppose it depends on the value of "low" you have in mind.

Martian surface gravity is lower than that of Earth by a very large margin; it's about 40% of what we feel on Earth. But that isn't enough for conventional slugthrowing weapons to reach orbital velocity. Moreover, Mars does have an atmosphere.

Even on the moon, orbital velocity at the surface is 2815 meters per second, much higher than the speed of any shoulder-fired weapon that now exists, and quite a lot higher than even the muzzle velocity of high-powered tank guns. And the moon has about as low a gravity as any place you're likely to fight

Now, on a very small celestial body, considerably smaller than the moon, bullets will achieve orbital velocity. But there's only a narrow range in which this is a problem, because for rocks only a little smaller than that, the bullets will also achieve escape velocity and you'll never see them again because the gravity well of the rock you're standing on is too shallow to hold them.

Moreover, this is only a problem if the bullets don't strike any terrain features (such as a mountain on the other side of planet).

Airlessness: - Just checking, do the propellants in modern firearms provide all their own oxygen ecetre? Will gas ejection systems work properly in a vacum? Will vacum wielding affect the moving part in a gun? Basically gun designers make guns based on a variety of assumptions, which include the assumption that they're going to be fired in an atmosphere vaguely similiar to what you find at sea level Terra.
StephenThe propellants are explosives; explosives contain their own oxidizers. That's why they can explode at all when wrapped inside a brass cartridge.

Vacuum welding can be a problem, but it doesn't have to be. The engineering problems involved in overcoming it (and gas ejection system faults) would be much easier to overcome than the ones involved in making lasers into shoulder weapons.

Re: Recoil. While modern firearms generally work on the simplest level that the equal and opposite force of the bullet is applied to the firearm, this isn't actually written in stone.I'm afraid that it is. It certainly is for a gauss weapon; the math is very straightforward. In a conventional firearm, at least, the actual force is applied by expanding gases. You can open channels for the gases to expand out the back of the gun and mitigate the recoil that way, though you get a nasty backblast.

But in a gauss weapon, there's no way to avoid it, because the force interaction is direct between the object being accelerated and the gun itself. The gun itself generates the magnetic fields, and the gun itself interacts with the projectile. Therefore, the force between the projectile and the propelling agent will act on the gun just as it acts on the projectile. There really is no way around that.

I'd be very surprised if by the time they produce infantry Gauss weapons they can't make the "for each force there is an equal and opposite force somewhere" be somewhere other than the soldier using the weapon.

StephenThey can insert recoil springs to cushion the impact and spread it over a longer period of time, but that's about it. And that doesn't do very much good; you still can't get cannon levels of momentum for the projectile no matter how good your spring is. Moreover, it makes the weapon heavier and adds more parts to break down.

A Guass Rifle might be ables to dump the recoil into the magnetic field of the planet it's on...That's at least plausible- you fire the rifle and the planet jerks very slightly instead of the rifle jerking back sharply. But it wouldn't work, because it's the interaction between the gun and the bullet which produces the recoil. And you can't use the planetary magnetic field as a recoil brake, either, because it isn't strong enough.

Moreover, many celestial bodies do not have magnetic fields. In fact, magnetic fields are rarer than atmospheres. So now we have a weapon that will rip the user's shoulder off if he tries to fire it on, say, Mars. Whereas a bolt-action rifle would do no such thing (and would, in fact, function just fine).

Also you could possibly convert it to heat, or even convert it into energy to partially recharge the rifle.Unfortunately, those tricks won't work, because the recoil comes from the law of conservation of momentum, not of energy. Momentum is a conserved vector quantity; for every newton-second of impulse throwing the bullet forward, you get a newton-second of impulse throwing the gun backward. That impulse will be transmitted to whatever is holding the gun in place.

It's a while since I did any physics but I recall there are cute tricks you can play with magnetic fields. I remember the one where if you have a sattelite in orbit and have a conducter hanging above and below the satelite you can run a charge along it and speed up or slow down, with the Earth doing the reverse.That only works because the conductor is several kilometers long, moving at many thousands of kilometers an hour, and (above all) because you don't need a large acceleration quickly. To get useful effects on the scale of a shoulder weapon for recoil absorption, you'd need to use currents so big that it is literally not possible for matter to contain those currents without producing an enormous range of short circuits.

Re: Small LG airless, or low pressure world. There's a large gap between ground out quickly and escape velocity. Soldiers have enough to worry about without having to worry about their small arms fire hitting something 100kms or more away,Again, this is only a bad thing for them if there's something over on the far side of the enemy from them- in which case that something could just as easily be shot by the enemy as by them. Crossfire scenarios are relatively rare.

or yes, if you're VERY unlucky, having your own bullets come all the way back around and shoot you in the back. Friendly fire is ugly enough at the best of times, but having your own bullet hit you would be truly foul (and murphy's law would indicate that sooner or later it would happen).

StephenAh, but this is physically possible only on a very narrow and specific range of planets. Even on such planets, the odds of it happening are much less than the odds of, say, the enemy's bullet hitting you.

Cyborg Pirate

2007-05-02, 10:00 AM

I just grabbed my physics books and wanted to start on a long post, but Dervag got there already. @Dervag: All seconded!

Fhaolan

2007-05-02, 12:07 PM

Ah, but this is physically possible only on a very narrow and specific range of planets. Even on such planets, the odds of it happening are much less than the odds of, say, the enemy's bullet hitting you.

This is most definitately a case of 'You know your life sucks when...'

Cyborg Pirate

2007-05-02, 12:10 PM

This is most definitately a case of 'You know your life sucks when...'

Only if you actually survive it.

Now why am I thinking of the Hitchhiker's Guide? :smallconfused:

Norsesmithy

2007-05-02, 02:03 PM

lots of stuff.
Bravo and well said.

Stephen_E

2007-05-02, 07:01 PM

I'd note that Earth's moon is one of the largest moons in this system. Phobos and Deimos<sp> are both fightable over, and considerably smaller.
Even on the moon bullets ar going to travel a looooong way. Note you don't need a smooth world since the bullet is probably travelling in an eliptical path, so you only need the terrain to be at the same or lower level on the other side of the world.

That said, the actual shooting yourself is Hitchikers Guide material, but the problem of a MUCH larger area been affected by flying lead isn't.

Re: Guass weapons. Now I will say I don't consider them magicly good weapons, BUT, I have difficulties saying that a weapon we don't currently have the technology to make, will be useless because of problems we don't currently have the technology to handle.

My point is that IF we can build guass infantry rifles capable of punching rounds through several tanks (and this requires some upgrading in the projectiles as well) we MIGHT be able to handle the recoil problem. No guarantees, just possibilities.

That's the crux of looking at future weapon systems involving technolgy/science we don't currently have. We can only talk possibilities and problems. There are no certainties.

TTBOMK we currently have neither the science, nor the technology, for rifles of a weight suitable for a standard infantry weapon, with a magnetic accelerator capable of acclerating a projectile to velocities capable of passing through several tanks, with the internal power capable of running such a Mag Acellerator for the freq required for a Inf rifle, with projectiles capable of passing through several tanks if they had sufficient velocity.

That seems to me big enough problems that saying "well that's all easy, nut the recoil problem would lick us, so it's pointless" is a bit like falling out of a plane at very high altitude without a parachute above the Pacific ocean and saying "the big problem is that I have cancer".

Stephen

Dervag

2007-05-02, 08:11 PM

I'd note that Earth's moon is one of the largest moons in this system. Phobos and Deimos<sp> are both fightable over, and considerably smaller.Point the first: Phobos and Deimos are so small and barren that there's no point in fighting on their surface. If someone you don't like occupies the surface, you can stand off and blast them until they're dead. In fact, the same goes for any airless world that lacks valuable terrain features.

Point the second: Phobos and Deimos are so small that projectile weapons will achieve escape velocity with respect to their surface. Therefore the projectiles will fly off into space and not come back down.

Point the third: In this case, the gravity is low enough that you might well want a recoilless weapon. However, such weapons would be necessary only in a restricted subset of all battlefield scenarios. They'd be as specialized as the armor used by bomb-disposal units, and no one would equip their entire army purely for fighting in low gravity conditions.

Even on the moon bullets ar going to travel a looooong way. Note you don't need a smooth world since the bullet is probably travelling in an eliptical path, so you only need the terrain to be at the same or lower level on the other side of the world.You need the terrain to be very low indeed around you, and on the far side of the planet (i.e. lower than your head). And you still need to shoot along a great circle path.

That said, the actual shooting yourself is Hitchikers Guide material, but the problem of a MUCH larger area been affected by flying lead isn't.It wouldn't be a problem bigger than the ones soldiers already have to deal with (such as incoming enemy fire).

Re: Guass weapons. Now I will say I don't consider them magicly good weapons, BUT, I have difficulties saying that a weapon we don't currently have the technology to make, will be useless because of problems we don't currently have the technology to handle.The problem is that there are two kinds of physical problems a weapon can have. One kind is solvable because it's a matter of inventing better materials, or of engineering smaller parts.

The other is not solvable, because it's a fundamental constraint imposed by laws of physics. No weapon system will ever be able to unscramble eggs or brake its recoil against the Earth's magnetic field. Those are limits imposed not by our ability to invent, but by the laws that all matter in the universe follow.

That's the crux of looking at future weapon systems involving technolgy/science we don't currently have. We can only talk possibilities and problems. There are no certainties.Yes, there are; the same basic laws of physics and ballistics continue to apply. We will never invent shoulder arms for ordinary people that carry much more momentum per shot than a bolt-action rifle. We could build weapons that fire smaller projectiles at much higher velocities, of course. But we can't build a way to eliminate recoil or transfer it into the Earth's magnetic field, because that would violate the law of conservation of momentum, which is in fact an actual physical law.

Awetugiw

2007-05-03, 05:50 AM

Is it just me or are recoil and bullets hitting yourself actually quite inconsequential problems on an airless battlefield, compared to the problem of you weapon overheating?

With only radiation and you to get rid of the weapons heat you are going to run into trouble really quick if your weapon isn't specifically designed with heat-absorbing areas or something.

As for the recoil thing: there is indeed no way to stop the weapon from gaining momentum. There is however nothing I am aware of in the laws of physics that says that this momentum must be passed on to you, instead of something else.

One could theoretically use the momentum to fire something else in approximately the opposite direction. Of course you'll have to be very careful that this 'something' doesn't become a deadly weapon in its own right (spread out gas might work), and this will make your weapon very complicated and quite heavy.

Still, there is no reason why this cannot be done, there are just reasons why this probably will not be done.

Storm Bringer

2007-05-03, 09:22 AM

As for the recoil thing: there is indeed no way to stop the weapon from gaining momentum. There is however nothing I am aware of in the laws of physics that says that this momentum must be passed on to you, instead of something else.

One could theoretically use the momentum to fire something else in approximately the opposite direction. Of course you'll have to be very careful that this 'something' doesn't become a deadly weapon in its own right (spread out gas might work), and this will make your weapon very complicated and quite heavy.

recoilless rilfes?

they exsist. Wikipedia can give you a better idea of how they work, but it;s something like this:

the breech of the barrel has a cone shaped nozzle, with the smallest end nearest the cartridge. the cartridge isn't gas proof like normal ones are.

when the propellant goes off, the gas expands in all directions. in a normal gun, all the gas is force to go down the barrel, pushing the bullet, and the expansion in other directions either ends up as adding to recoil or the shot.

in a recoiless design,most of the gas flows backwards out of the gun though the vent, while the rest flows foreward and pushes the projectile. since nothing is resisting the flow of gas backwards, it doesn't pass it's kenetic energy on to the gun. The result is a HUGE backblast (on the order of tens of meters in some designs), an almightly din, and a effective recoil of a few percent the normal one. result: you don't need the heavy carridge and recoil compensators for big guns

pros:
you can make a large bore gun exceedingly light. Post WW2, the US made a 75mil RCL that could match the famous flak 88 (which, on it's orginal AA mount, weighed 25-odd tons) in proformance that came in at just 80 kilos. some of the smaller desgins were portable by one man, and were used almost exactly like bazookas.

cons:
takes something like three times as much propellant to work, since most of it hs vented to counter recoil.

Has a massive blackblast, which makes it hard to site (since you need a clear space behind the gun for tens of meters.) I've got a book here saying one models backblast was 'fatal to anyone within 50 meters', but the blast itself must have been much longer.

same job can be done better by missles, which don't need quite so much space behind, can be guided, and can challenge even the best tank armour with one man portable systems.

No one has tried to make the system work for a small arms scale gun. the smallest RCLs i know of are 50mil sized guns used by nazi paras.

I think the backblast would mean you'd have a gun built like a bazooka, over the shoulder, and it wouldn't be very handy in close quarters.

but they do exsist.

Dervag

2007-05-03, 09:57 AM

Is it just me or are recoil and bullets hitting yourself actually quite inconsequential problems on an airless battlefield, compared to the problem of you weapon overheating?Actually, yes, and it's a problem that people like me and Stephen_E tend to ignore.

As for the recoil thing: there is indeed no way to stop the weapon from gaining momentum. There is however nothing I am aware of in the laws of physics that says that this momentum must be passed on to you, instead of something else.Right, but to pass the momentum on to something else you have to physically tie the gun-bullet system to that something else.

For example, you can transfer the recoil of a heavy machine gun into your vehicle rather than your shoulder; but to do this you have to physically mount the gun on the vehicle. That restricts its usefulness as a weapon because you can't carry it around with you.

I specified "shoulder weapon" for a reason. A shoulder weapon is a weapon that a normal human being can carry around and fired without need for a rest, mount, or other device meant to control the recoil. Such devices are absolutely necessary for heavy weapons, but that's the dividing line between heavy weapons and small arms. If your gauss rifle imparts so much momentum to the bullet that you have to fire it from a mount or tripod to keep it from breaking your shoulder, then it isn't a shoulder weapon and it shouldn't be issued to the average infantryman if you can help it.

One could theoretically use the momentum to fire something else in approximately the opposite direction. Of course you'll have to be very careful that this 'something' doesn't become a deadly weapon in its own right (spread out gas might work), and this will make your weapon very complicated and quite heavy.It's already been done; it's called a "recoilless cannon." Stephen_E does a good job of explaining how it works.

The weaknesses of recoilless guns (which are why the US Army doesn't use them anymore, among other things) are that they are complicated and heavy, that they have short range because much of the force of the exploding cartridge is wasted in cancelling out the recoil, and that the cloud of gas ejected from the rear of the weapon can burn your face off if you stand too close.

Certainly, no one would outfit their entire army with recoilless cannons or any other, similar weapon. The guy firing the recoilless needs at least several people with lighter, more portable, more versatile weapons keeping watch and protecting him from attackers who try to off him in situations where he can't fire his weapon (like when there's a wall twenty feet behind him).