Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXII

[Brother Oni]

Real World Weapon, Armour and Tactics Thread XXII

This thread is a resource for getting information about real life weapons, armour and tactics. The concept has always been that the information is for RPG players and DMs so they can use it to make their games better, thus it's here rather than in Friendly Banter.

A few rules for this thread:


This thread is for asking questions about how weapons, armour and tactics really work. As such, it's not going to include game rule statistics. If you have such a question, especially if it stems from an answer or question in this thread, feel free to start a new thread and include a link back to here. If you do ask a rule question here, you'll be asked to move it elsewhere, and then we'll be happy to help out with it.

Any weapon or time period is open for questions. Medieval and ancient warfare questions seem to predominate, but since there are many games set in other periods as well, feel free to ask about any weapon. This includes futuristic ones - but be aware that these will be likely assessed according to their real life feasibility. Thus, phasers, for example, will be talked about in real-world science and physics terms rather than the Star Trek canon. If you want to discuss a fictional weapon from a particular source according to the canonical explanation, please start a new thread for it.

Please try to cite your claims if possible. If you know of a citation for a particular piece of information, please include it. However, everyone should be aware that sometimes even the experts don't agree, so it's quite possible to have two conflicting answers to the same question. This isn't a problem; the asker of the question can examine the information and decide which side to go with. The purpose of the thread is to provide as much information as possible. Debates are fine, but be sure to keep it a friendly debate (even if the experts can't!).

No modern real-world political discussion. As the great Carl von Clausevitz once said, "War is merely the continuation of policy by other means," so politics and war are heavily intertwined. However, politics are a big hot-button issue and one banned on these boards, so avoid political analysis if at all possible (this thread is primarily about military hardware). There's more leeway on this for anything prior to about 1800, but be very careful with all of it, and anything past 1900 is surely not open for analysis (These are arbitrary dates but any dates would be, and these are felt to be reasonable).

No graphic descriptions. War is violent, dirty, and horrific, and anyone discussing it should be keenly aware of that. However, on this board graphic descriptions of violence (or sexuality) are not allowed, so please avoid them.


With that done, have at and enjoy yourselves!
Thread I (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?24294-Got-A-Weapon-or-Armor-Question)
Thread III (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?21318-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-III)
Thread IV (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?18302-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-IV)
Thread V (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?80863-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-V)
Thread VI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?124683-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-VI)
Thread VII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?168432-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-VII)
Thread VIII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?192911-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-VIII)
Thread IX (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?217159-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-IX)
Thread X (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?238042-Got-a-Real-World-Weapons-or-Armour-Question-Mk-X)
Thread XI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?255453-Got-a-Real-World-Weapons-or-Armour-Question-Mk-XI)
Thread XII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?282471-Got-a-Real-World-Weapons-or-Armour-Question-Mk-XII)
Thread XIII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?308462-Got-a-Real-World-Weapons-or-Armour-Question-Mk-XIII)
Thread XIV (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?327994-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-XIV)
Thread XV (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?347806-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armour-Question-Mk-XV)
Thread XVI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?371623-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XVI)
Thread XVII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?392804-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XVII)
Thread XVIII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?421723-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XVIII)
Thread XIX (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?454083-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XIX)
Thread XX (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?480058-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XX)
Thread XXI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?493127-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XXI)

[Brother Oni]

Monofilaments also have problems with rigidity - they may be effectively unable to thrust, unless the magic is keeping them from bending like a paper sheet - this would also be a problem with cuts, but if you swing the sword, it realigns itself thanks to aerodynamics. This is all assuming that it has enough stiffness to be usable as a normal sword, as opposed to urumi - though urumi with monofilament blades would be pretty scary.


I wonder, if you had sufficient rigidity and correct thinness of blade, how dissimilar would a monofilament blade would be to a light sabre from Star Wars?

There would be similarities in the handling of the weapon (ie no weight blade) and the cutting potential against people (although I believe the light sabre cauterises), although with the significant disability of not being able to turn off the blade for storage.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

My vote for such a blade would be something like the traditional cyberpunk monofilament whip (as in the original short story Johnny Mnemonic) - weighted on the end, and to sheath it, you basically roll it up into the crosspiece of the pommel. Great at cutting, useless for thrusting.

However, a monofilament blade may not be able to penetrate too deeply due to friction from the material it's cutting through on the flats of the blade itself, and the edge not being able to push that material apart far enough to reduce that - you might be better off with a normal thickness blade with an edge that's somehow sharpened to sub-micron, possibly even nanometer scales, and that can somehow maintain that edge.

[gkathellar]

Wouldn't a monofilament weapon generally be too light to displace the material it was trying to cut? Without stretching it taut or something, I feel like it'd be hard to get enough momentum behind it to be effective, no matter how sharp it was.

[Mike_G]

Sharpness is good, because it focuses the force on a very small area and is good for parting material, but that's only a piece of the equation. If you don't have momentum behind it, you won't cut deeply. So a very sharp edge, with a good solid blade behind it is good. A weapon with less mass needs more speed to get that momentum.

It wind up reaching a point of diminishing returns. You can always extend that with magic or some kind of Unobtainium (vibranium, adamantium, mithril) but then you're into s/f or fantasy, and you're ignoring the physics. It's like lightsabres. They have their own rules, but we can't really discuss the physics or a lightsabre, because it's magic.

I don't know that you can get a sword sharp enough (practically) to cut through armor effortlessly.

[Max_Killjoy]

90% of what you read or see regarding "monofiliment" in fictional works or speculation is pure technobabble.

[Brother Oni]

Wouldn't a monofilament weapon generally be too light to displace the material it was trying to cut? Without stretching it taut or something, I feel like it'd be hard to get enough momentum behind it to be effective, no matter how sharp it was.

On the tail end of the last thread, I had a post discussing the effectiveness of obsidian weapons, so I would say it depends on the relative durability and hardness of the target material to the weapon.

Something soft like flesh isn't going to stand up well to what is effectively a super sharp broken glass weapon, so momentum isn't going to be as important in this instance. As Mike_G pointed out though, armour throws a big spanner in the works.

[Galloglaich]

On the tail end of the last thread, I had a post discussing the effectiveness of obsidian weapons, so I would say it depends on the relative durability and hardness of the target material to the weapon.

Something soft like flesh isn't going to stand up well to what is effectively a super sharp broken glass weapon, so momentum isn't going to be as important in this instance. As Mike_G pointed out though, armour throws a big spanner in the works.

The other thing that makes steel so useful as a material for swords is it's flexibility and 'springiness'. You need that combination of mass, stiffness, and springiness to make good blade. Otherwise the shocks escalate so swiftly that you usually end up with something broken. That is incidentally another of the problems with titanium, as a sort of 'super-aluminum' it's not very flexible.

However, they have made flexible materials out of other things, and they can temper other things. I've seen plastic springs for example, and some kind of brass or copper alloy springs, and tempered glass is now a common material.

If you could make a tempered glass as flexible as spring steel, that would be a formidable material for weapons. Still probably not enough to easily cut through armor but you might be getting closer.

G

[Max_Killjoy]

The other thing that makes steel so useful as a material for swords is it's flexibility and 'springiness'. You need that combination of mass, stiffness, and springiness to make good blade. Otherwise the shocks escalate so swiftly that you usually end up with something broken. That is incidentally another of the problems with titanium, as a sort of 'super-aluminum' it's not very flexible.

However, they have made flexible materials out of other things, and they can temper other things. I've seen plastic springs for example, and some kind of brass or copper alloy springs, and tempered glass is now a common material.

If you could make a tempered glass as flexible as spring steel, that would be a formidable material for weapons. Still probably not enough to easily cut through armor but you might be getting closer.

G


The "tempered glass" I know of is treated to change its "failure mode", so that it will shatter into very small relatively unsharp pieces, rather than into potentially lethal shards.

Is the tempered glass you mention here not the same thing?

[Mike_G]

Just moving this over from the old thread, because I'm not going to re-type it, but I'm not ready to let it go.

Spot the Marine from Boston.






The thing is there's nothing about the USMC aside possibly from training, (which has no reason to be unique to them other than the army being lazy), that makes them uniquely qualified for it.

I'd also argue that fundamentally you don't keep a military around to do these things. Rather you use the military to do these things because it's an efficient use of existing resources to deal with a "threat to national interests", but fundamentally you keep them around to deal with "threats to national survival". Protecting your interests of course helps with avoiding threats to survival and it's a solid efficient use of military forces between the big threats, but its not why you go keeping one around.

Also don't misunderstand what i meant with my paratrooper comments. Everything i know about the US army's units in that suggests their totally not suited for the rapid response role as they're setup now. My point was that a properly setup, organised, trained, e.t.c. airborne force with appropriate air force support, (in the same way the USMC needs navy support), attached and properly dispersed among the US's many foreign bases could reach any point on the globe with a modest sized force on a matter of hours notice subject to appropriate readiness when the order comes down.




So, if you totally re-organize the Army to do the Marines' job, then they could?





The USMC can only beat that if they have a ship prepositioned, (and not by much), and the navy doesn't have that many ships that it can preposition them to cover so much of the globe simultaneously. Add in that all those specialised ships are probably a lot more expensive and i don't see the USMC as the best option for rapid response to the kind of opposition the US commonly faces in it's current typical national interest fights.



But the ships add support close to the theater of operations. If we need to fly Air Force support from Germany to East Africa, but we could park a fleet three miles off the coast, what would be better?

And parking a carrier and a MEU off the coast is a clear signal that we are ready to intervene, but without actually violating anybody's sovereignty.




Pseudo EDIT:

Grimeth posted while i was writing this so i'll quickly address a couple of lines of his.



I won't disagree with this entirely, (though depending on the circumstances it's entirely possible to have the paratroopers either seize an airstrip or if the terrain is favourable drop in combat engineers and clear one), but my understanding is we where talking about the fairly typical situation and advance force going in first to get boots on the ground early ahead of the big boys in the army showing up. Obviously a quick in and out in larger than a special forces is somthing that an amphibious force can do far better when there's a suitable coastline available and i'll admit it didn't really occur to me till you pointed it out. It;s a good argument for some form of USMC capability in some "National Interest" situations. I'd still say however that a properly equipped, trained, organised, and based airborne force can get an adequately sized and equipped force boots down faster, which is what i thought we were discussing tbh when i made the initial comments about paratroopers.



It's a lot bigger messier operation to have the 101 drop in and seize an airstrip, relying on planes flying in from hundreds of miles away, to do a job that a MEU is already ready to do, supported by a fleet parked three miles offshore.

So, sure, we can replace the Marines, if we re-engineer the Army's units to fit the job the Marines do.

The Marines have a very flexible mission that they are train and equipped for. The Army has a different mission that they have trained an equipped for. Both can do conventional ground combat, and there is overlap, but replacing the Navy and Marines with Airborne troops supported by the USAF is ...

Well, it's a bad idea.

The same way mothballing the Army and the Air Force, because the Navy already has ground and air aseets is a bad idea.

[Galloglaich]

The "tempered glass" I know of is treated to change its "failure mode", so that it will shatter into very small relatively unsharp pieces, rather than into potentially lethal shards.

Is the tempered glass you mention here not the same thing?

I'm pretty sure tempered glass is also stronger. Tempering seems to be a process they have figured out for many materials now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toughened_glass

"to increase its strength compared with normal glass". It also changes failure mode like you said so win / win.

"There are two main types of heat-treated glass: heat-strengthened and fully tempered. Heat-strengthened glass is twice as strong as annealed glass while fully tempered glass has typically four to six times the strength of annealed glass and withstands heating in microwave ovens. The difference is the residual stress in the edge and glass surface. Fully tempered glass in the US is generally rated above 65 megapascals (9,400 psi) in pressure-resistance, while heat-strengthened glass is between 40 and 55 megapascals (5,800 and 8,000 psi).["

G

[Max_Killjoy]

Just moving this over from the old thread, because I'm not going to re-type it, but I'm not ready to let it go.

Spot the Marine from Boston.



So, if you totally re-organize the Army to do the Marines' job, then they could?




But the ships add support close to the theater of operations. If we need to fly Air Force support from Germany to East Africa, but we could park a fleet three miles off the coast, what would be better?

And parking a carrier and a MEU off the coast is a clear signal that we are ready to intervene, but without actually violating anybody's sovereignty.



It's a lot bigger messier operation to have the 101 drop in and seize an airstrip, relying on planes flying in from hundreds of miles away, to do a job that a MEU is already ready to do, supported by a fleet parked three miles offshore.

So, sure, we can replace the Marines, if we re-engineer the Army's units to fit the job the Marines do.

The Marines have a very flexible mission that they are train and equipped for. The Army has a different mission that they have trained an equipped for. Both can do conventional ground combat, and there is overlap, but replacing the Navy and Marines with Airborne troops supported by the USAF is ...

Well, it's a bad idea.

The same way mothballing the Army and the Air Force, because the Navy already has ground and air aseets is a bad idea.


Well said.

For some reason, some people think that there's some simple and efficient way to get rid of entire branches of the US military, that's supposedly being ignored for irrational reasons.


(And if you really mean business, you put the Marines ashore AND have Army airborne assets land to seize inland objectives at the same time...)

[gkathellar]

Well said.

For some reason, some people think that there's some simple and efficient way to get rid of entire branches of the US military, that's supposedly being ignored for irrational reasons.

Hear hear!

In fairness, organizational inertia is a real thing that happens. It's just not nearly so common as people tend to believe it is. And really, even within a greater branch of the USAF, there are lots of sub-branches that specialize in particular things. Having diverse troops with diverse training is important.

[Carl]

I guess I was more addressing whoever said its "searching for a mission". I still maintain that the airborne guys aren't getting there faster, the MEU is already out and about, and its prepositioned half the time.

Helos are actually not the primary means of getting the Marines and their gear ashore. Its a combination of Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAVs) and Landing craft Air Cushioned (LCACs) and helos.

I agree that airborne could get an airfield built, but again without a nearby airbase or air superiority it is far inferior to showing up ready to rock and roll.

Some of the Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW) that the USMC is set up for are:
Arms Control
Enforcement of Sanctions and maritime intercept operations
Enforcing exclusion zones
Humanitarian Aid
Non combatant Evacuation Operations
Show of Force operations

Well it was me on the whole "searching for a mission" thing.

Maybe i've got a complete misunderstanding of what the marines take ashore with them, i thought it was light armour and supply vehicles plus infantry and kit.

Thats all stuff the army can air drop in.

Like i said the army cannot do this with it's current air-drop asset setup. It's current setup is not upto task and from what i can make out is basically a special forces setup writ large.

But with appropriately trained and equipped units with appropriate planning, support, basing, et.c. in the type of low threat conflicts that have predominated over the last 50 years the army can build an air droppable force, (subject to air force cooperation on escort duty just as you need navy cooperation to escort your ships around and support you once your on the ground), that can bring in everything the marines would on a half a day's notice to very nearly any point on the globe on or off a coastline. In fact they could probably bring i more in some respects, (though i agree dropping in M1 Abrams however possibble is a bit much). My impression is that whilst yes the marines tend to be quick to get somwhere half a days notice is a bit of a stretch even for them unless they're perfectly positioned ahead of time?




AFAIK, the fabled railgun which e.g. Ghost Fleet (the book) put on the Zumwalt actually isn't an option yet, it just needs too much energy. The book treated it like a problem like a camera's flash, a flash consumes a lot of energy and has a separate battery that is loaded before sending the large energy quantity the flash needs. Apparently, the right battery to have a railgun shoot 10 rounds of unspecified weight per minute at 8,200 feet p s on a range of over 200 miles just doesn't exist yet. Instead, the Zumwalt has the Amazing Superfast Howitzer.

There are currently 2 railgun projects I know of, one is by GE and is pretty much a mobile base that needs to be used after unpacking and while not moving and is mainly sold as anti-air, the other one is from BAE that has developed a prototype model as naval cannon and is now trying to build one to be used as a tank gun. I couldn't find exact details, however (I guess it's all in-between "safety hush-hush" and "budget hush-hush"). However, they aim to 100+ miles for the naval cannon, so over the horizon is surely an objective.

About what kind of blast area these things would have, I am not sure it would be small, it all depends on how much energy can be packed into them. 32 mega joule is the British project, maybe someone can approximate what it means: my calculations give 8 kg of TNT (or a 33 tonnes truck running you over at 100 mph). Not so awesome, compared to the Iowa cannons.

Also, is a new discussion needed?


32mj is the proposed naval gun, it's being developed with an aim to get the power requirements e.t.c. to an operational capability in the near future. And 32mj is bad. an APFSDS is 25mj.

Don't get me wrong anything that round hits is going to get flattened, even an MBT. Emphasis on anything it hits, because it prodfuces no shockwave to speak of and very little shrapnel. a simple 5" navy shell, (which is considered too light for the shore bombardment role), only has about 20MJ of explosive energy in it, but that produce blastwave plus shrapnel lethal over 10's of meters. The latter point is also why the Zumwaltz actual AGS is attracting flak, the proposed super range shells have son little explosive they're offering little advantage over the existing 5" guns. And the Zumwaltz like the rest of the navy doesn't really want to come so close in shore it can use it's non-boosted range shells because it can't afford to risk getting hit by the shore based artillery. To throw a really big number out there, (though i agree the iowa's are a bit overkill for the role), in comparison. Set off a 5" shell in the centre of an olympic track and field stadium and anyone at or beyond the track is safe as such, (probability theory says the shrapnel would still hit a few people in the stands, but the majority would get away with just a bad scare), set off an Iowa HE shell and (numbers pulled from a quick web search BTW), the concussion will kill almost everyone on the track and field area, (the far edges would be just outside the concussion area), and the shrapnel will kill nearly everyone in the stands.


@Mike_G: Give me a few minutes to process, you posted while i was typing.

[Carl]

@Mike_G:

I wouldn't say completely reorganise the entire army.

TBH i think this comes back to two points. What each of is thinking with the term rapid response, and one of the core assumptions in your last post.

When you say rapid response i think "random crisis crop up i random foreign interest to the US and within 24 hours the decision is made to send troops in". The odds that the navy and the USMC will just randomly happen to have a carrier and MEU within several hundred miles strikes me as fairly low. Yeah if you've got a carrier group and marines a few miles off shore when the decision comes down they're absolutely the best tool for the job, i just don;t see that as a reliable scenario to expect to face.

@Max_iljoyu: Do not misunderstand me, in the event somthing more serious ever break out the marines amphibious capabilities and skillsets are going to be sorely needed. ut much like the army's MBT, the Navy's ASW and surface naval combat capabilities and the Air-forces super high tech stealth air superiority capabilities they're useful but not extreme value in lower threat conflicts. But you still want them around for a rainy day so to say. I would totally never support getting rid of the USMC anymore than i would the Army's heavy tanks for example.

[Mike_G]

MEU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_expeditionary_unit)

Note the tanks, fighters, transport aircraft, attack helicopters, transport helicopters etc. plus the infantry battalion and artillery battery.

Then go here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps#Mission)

Then we can talk.

As far as quick reaction, how often do we need to invade someplace with 24 hours?

Now, how often do we see escalating tensions, where we can send a fleet thataway?

[snowblizz]

As far as quick reaction, how often do we need to invade someplace with 24 hours?

I'd go further, has anyone ever, anywhere been able to respond that fast to anything. Took more time than that for anyone to notice the earthquake and tsunami Boxingday 2004, much less for anyone in a position of power to do make any decision about it. Already well after this journalists were beating down the doors of politicians asking for their actions and they were staring wildeyed into the camera wondering what it had to do with them. Just to use a real example. I understand emergency earthquake teams were on standby wondering when they'd be able to go while politicians argued about financials and budget items.:smallamused:

Unless blindingly obvious what's going on 24hrs might be enough for the most essential decision making to come to realsie something needs to be done. More is probably required to figure out what the right decision is.

[Max_Killjoy]

The nice thing about a fleet with its own full range of air assets and ground forces is that it can be heading that way while you're deciding, or when you anticipate.

[Mike_G]

The nice thing about a fleet with its own full range of air assets and ground forces is that it can be heading that way while you're deciding, or when you anticipate.

Exactly.

And for those who don't want to click and read lots of stuff, a MEU would land with 4 M1 Abrams tanks, 8 Harrier jets, 8 AH 1 attack helicopters, 6 155 mm howiotzers, plus a whole mess of LAVs, ATGMs, AAVs, mortars, engineers, recon, medical and water purification facilities, plus a buttload of ground, air and sea transport.

Not just "light armor, infantry and kit." Not all stuff you can drop from a plane, and it won;t be scattered over the countryside after it lands.

It's a force with enough teeth to give a headache to any military we're likely to encounter, and when you combine it with a carrier battle group...well, that's a lot of persuasion taht you can send in the direction of the local tin pot dictator and give him a chance to change his mind.

As has been said upthread, there's always two of these at sea, with an third in reserve, so there's no hotspot we can't move to quickly, with support just off the coast

[Vinyadan]

About quick reaction forces, has anyone heard something about that superfast reaction system that was supposed to be a bunch of conventionally armed ICBMs? The USA wanted one (or some American politician said they wanted one), but it looks like a mistake to me - it looks like a way to make other nations uncertain and trigger happy, when any country on the globe is a potential target and cannot be sure if the thing that has been launched as a fast reaction is an atomic bomb or just a lot of explosive.

The idea behind it is that it takes weeks or months to start an invasion and mobilize troops, while these missiles could be launched anytime and strike in a matter of hours. While there remains a problem of "and then?", which is, once a bunch of missiles have been launched, you may have dismantled a few important point in the energy and industrial grid and maybe even have destroyed a seat of government, but it still is no alternative to an invasion. It's also something that missile cruisers could probably have done without alerting any nuclear power.

It's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike

The only time I can think of something similar being used was when the USSs Peterson and Chancellorsville fired a bunch of missiles at the Iraqi secret services building in 1993 as reprisal to an attempted assassination. Also, there were some who insisted about shooting a few undeclared missiles at the Syrian Army, but nothing came out of it. Otherwise, other strikes weren't really directed at state actors. I guess a few shots were thrown against Iran or Iranian ships or installations?

BTW, does anyone know if it's legal to bomb your enemy's parliament or seat of government during a war? While I see the destruction of the buildings as a desirable objective because of their symbolic value, also killing the representatives of a nation looks like a bit too much to me.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

There's probably nothing stopping you going after the seat of government in theory, but in practise, it'll be one of the most heavily defended targets for conventional arms, and most countries will have contingencies based on cold war era planning for continuance of government, such as moving the government to a secure and protected location before any shooting starts.

You can also consider what'll happen in the aftermath, if your goal is to conquer or regime change, then you'll need a seat of government to operate from, and it's a lot easier to do so from semi-intact buildings than heaps of rubble. Plus there might be things like intelligence and security information that the former government held that you want.

[Garimeth]

Exactly.

And for those who don't want to click and read lots of stuff, a MEU would land with 4 M1 Abrams tanks, 8 Harrier jets, 8 AH 1 attack helicopters, 6 155 mm howiotzers, plus a whole mess of LAVs, ATGMs, AAVs, mortars, engineers, recon, medical and water purification facilities, plus a buttload of ground, air and sea transport.

Not just "light armor, infantry and kit." Not all stuff you can drop from a plane, and it won;t be scattered over the countryside after it lands.

It's a force with enough teeth to give a headache to any military we're likely to encounter, and when you combine it with a carrier battle group...well, that's a lot of persuasion taht you can send in the direction of the local tin pot dictator and give him a chance to change his mind.

As has been said upthread, there's always two of these at sea, with an third in reserve, so there's no hotspot we can't move to quickly, with support just off the coast

Well said, and it probably goes without saying, but you have all the support guys for that Helo squadron, that arty battery, the LAV platoon, the LCACs to get the tanks ashore, and a full infantry battalion and combat logistics battalion.

Also as mentioned upthread maritime prepositioning is a common practice, and the US Navy does underway replenishment, so the logistics chain is there for the MEU to operate indefinitely if it had to.

@Carl:
The Army could show up with some of the stuff we are talking about here, but again - they need air superiority to do it. The fleet let's you GET that air superiority, so that then the Army can come in. But more importantly we are not even discussing the broad range of things that the fleet does that are not "war" related. For example:

Let's say, for example, we had unrest brewing somewhere, and we needed to evacuate the US embassy and all of our citizens fleeing to it. The MEU is much better equipped to do that than airborne.

When that big earthquake hit Haiti, the fleet (sidenote the first US ship there, the Vinson, is my next unit) was there in 3 days, and that's about as out of the blue as you're ever going to find - certainly much more out of the blue than political brewing some where. Could airborne have been there faster? Yeah, potentially - but their not showing up with a portable nuclear power source or near as many assets. From Wikipedia:

"The US Navy listed its resources in the area as "17 ships, 48 helicopters and 12 fixed-wing aircraft" in addition to 10,000 sailors and Marines.[200] The Navy had conducted 336 air deliveries, delivered 32,400 US gallons (123,000 L) of water, 532,440 bottles of water, 111,082 meals and 9,000 lb (4,100 kg) of medical supplies by 20 January. Hospital ship Comfort began operations on 20 January, completing the arrival of the first group of sea-base vessels; this came as a new flotilla of USN ships were assigned to Haiti, including survey vessels, ferries, elements of the maritime prepositioning and underway replenishment fleets, and a further three amphibious operations ships, including another helicopter carrier."

I love my Airborne brothers, but their not bringing that much to the party, that fast - and they definitely aren't bringing food and beverages for the other guests.

[MrZJunior]

About quick reaction forces, has anyone heard something about that superfast reaction system that was supposed to be a bunch of conventionally armed ICBMs? The USA wanted one (or some American politician said they wanted one), but it looks like a mistake to me - it looks like a way to make other nations uncertain and trigger happy, when any country on the globe is a potential target and cannot be sure if the thing that has been launched as a fast reaction is an atomic bomb or just a lot of explosive.

The idea behind it is that it takes weeks or months to start an invasion and mobilize troops, while these missiles could be launched anytime and strike in a matter of hours. While there remains a problem of "and then?", which is, once a bunch of missiles have been launched, you may have dismantled a few important point in the energy and industrial grid and maybe even have destroyed a seat of government, but it still is no alternative to an invasion. It's also something that missile cruisers could probably have done without alerting any nuclear power.

It's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike

The only time I can think of something similar being used was when the USSs Peterson and Chancellorsville fired a bunch of missiles at the Iraqi secret services building in 1993 as reprisal to an attempted assassination. Also, there were some who insisted about shooting a few undeclared missiles at the Syrian Army, but nothing came out of it. Otherwise, other strikes weren't really directed at state actors. I guess a few shots were thrown against Iran or Iranian ships or installations?

BTW, does anyone know if it's legal to bomb your enemy's parliament or seat of government during a war? While I see the destruction of the buildings as a desirable objective because of their symbolic value, also killing the representatives of a nation looks like a bit too much to me.

My understanding is that those conventional ICBMs were meant as a way to strike a target much more quickly than using cruise missiles. There was an incident in the '90's where the US had intelligence that placed Osama Bin Laden at a particular camp in Afghanistan. The Navy fired a bunch of Tomahawks at him but in the time it took them to reach the target Bin Laden had moved on. Back in the Cold War it was calculated that an ICBM could reach it's target in the Soviet Union in about half an hour, if the US had fired one of those at the camp it would have been able to hit in time.

[Garimeth]

BTW, does anyone know if it's legal to bomb your enemy's parliament or seat of government during a war? While I see the destruction of the buildings as a desirable objective because of their symbolic value, also killing the representatives of a nation looks like a bit too much to me.

I imagine it falls under the same portion of the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) that not assassinating heads of state or killing non-combatants falls under.

[MrZJunior]

BTW, does anyone know if it's legal to bomb your enemy's parliament or seat of government during a war? While I see the destruction of the buildings as a desirable objective because of their symbolic value, also killing the representatives of a nation looks like a bit too much to me.

Those structures and cities are often historic and contain a lot of art, architecture, and other cultural heritage. International norms suggest you shouldn't bomb that stuff. You know, if you care about that sort of thing.

[Carl]

Cheers for the links Mike_G. I'll admit i had only a vague notion of what an MEU was, been meaning to google it but sleeping funny again, between that and IRL, just didn't get round to it. Honestly thats a lot more heavy duty stuff than i thought the marines had, i'm primarily a tech guy at heart so my impressions of a given type of units kit is formed a lot off what they emphasise in their specialist kit, (obviously what of it i've read up on), particularly what they're developing. For the marines that seem to be getting normally vehicle mounted capabilities, or vehicle portable capabilities, into man portable forms with a specific emphasis in the talk about the difficulty the marines have porting stuff around by vehicle because the marines don;t have a lot of them. To be fair the big surprise is the sheer numbers of vehicles, the helicopters, (at least in terms of being stuff put ashore instead of flying off the AWS's), and of course the abrams. I'll be completely honest that is a force you can't easily match by air drop, oh you could do it if you wanted, but it's would be a lot tougher than what i was imagining.

Also the 24 hour thing was more of a hypothetical. My point was more the navy is going to be days to a week+ away, politicians can be slow to make decisions, but they can still be quite fast by that standard on occasion.



Those structures and cities are often historic and contain a lot of art, architecture, and other cultural heritage. International norms suggest you shouldn't bomb that stuff. You know, if you care about that sort of thing.

Yeah pretty much anyone who went after some of those sites is asking for trouble from more than just their target. God forbid somwhere important across a big part of the world like jerusalem ever got hit like that. The kinds of hell that would raise would not be pretty.

[Lemmy]

What are/were common tactics to break/disperse enemy formation? Both in olden times and after the invention of gunpowder?

How big would be the advantage of an inhumanly disciplined army (such as the Unsullied from ASOIAF/GoT)?

[Garimeth]

What are/were common tactics to break/disperse enemy formation? Both in olden times and after the invention of gunpowder?

How big would be the advantage of an inhumanly disciplined army (such as the Unsullied from ASOIAF/GoT)?

The larger the force, the more discipline matters. Discipline is a force multiplier, and often equates to more training. Not familiar with the Unsullied, but by way of example look at the example of Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down) now yeah that mission didn't go as planned, but they still accomplished what they set out to do, and if you were to compare a body count of the Rangers vs. the locals... well the Rangers kicked some major ass, and they did it mostly without CAS and using Humvees and rifles. Most of them didn't even bring their NVGs because they were supposed to be back well before dark. That is an example of highly trained and disciplined force vs. one that is not.

I use that as an example because usually people will cite the tech and CAS advantage when we talk about the US Army, but those were largely irrelevant in that battle.

These things are still largely true in antiquity.

[MrZJunior]

Yeah pretty much anyone who went after some of those sites is asking for trouble from more than just their target. God forbid somwhere important across a big part of the world like jerusalem ever got hit like that. The kinds of hell that would raise would not be pretty.

Any time you start doing stuff that's hard to justify as furthering your military goals you are asking for trouble.

It's also a good way to end up with a very nasty entry in the history books. Historians don't forget.

[Mr Beer]

What are/were common tactics to break/disperse enemy formation? Both in olden times and after the invention of gunpowder?

How big would be the advantage of an inhumanly disciplined army (such as the Unsullied from ASOIAF/GoT)?

Traditionally you break the other formation by killing enough of them that they run away. That hasn't really changed much except that modern tech is obviously much better at killing them. Back in the day you might shower them with arrows in rotation until they've 'softened up' and then charge with cavalry. Now you might hit them with artillery and then send in armoured infantry.

My limited understanding is that modern military tactics favour hitting the enemy with overwhelming force and using combined arms as force multipliers. But really that's nothing particularly new.

So for example ambushing the enemy, killing a bunch of them before they can respond and then charging at them, is an effective way to disperse enemy formations. But that's because it's a great way to kill a lot of them in a chaotic environment which they don't control.

An inhumanly disciplined army has a major advantage because often units break up after only taking mild casualties. That said, the inhumanly disciplined guys also need to be able to effectively hurt the enemy. The Unsullied vs. say a bunch of ancient Egyptian warriors would probably go pretty well. Against a modern army, not so much.

[Mr Beer]

I guess more strategic ways to break the enemy are to bribe them to stop fighting, deny them supplies or money or simply go around them while you work on the main mission.

[Mike_G]

Cheers for the links Mike_G. I'll admit i had only a vague notion of what an MEU was, been meaning to google it but sleeping funny again, between that and IRL, just didn't get round to it. Honestly thats a lot more heavy duty stuff than i thought the marines had, i'm primarily a tech guy at heart so my impressions of a given type of units kit is formed a lot off what they emphasise in their specialist kit, (obviously what of it i've read up on), particularly what they're developing. For the marines that seem to be getting normally vehicle mounted capabilities, or vehicle portable capabilities, into man portable forms with a specific emphasis in the talk about the difficulty the marines have porting stuff around by vehicle because the marines don;t have a lot of them. To be fair the big surprise is the sheer numbers of vehicles, the helicopters, (at least in terms of being stuff put ashore instead of flying off the AWS's), and of course the abrams. I'll be completely honest that is a force you can't easily match by air drop, oh you could do it if you wanted, but it's would be a lot tougher than what i was imagining.

Also the 24 hour thing was more of a hypothetical. My point was more the navy is going to be days to a week+ away, politicians can be slow to make decisions, but they can still be quite fast by that standard on occasion.



So you see why I kinda lost it when you said we were "in search of a mission" and the job of teh MEU could be done by an Airborne unit.

The MEU is a versatile tool for US foreign policy, able to respond to any hotspot or humanitarian crisis, with a lot of support and capabilities. There are a couple of them floating out there right now, probably close to the places the intelligence community expects trouble.

There's no other unit that can do the job as well.

But those units have other, different jobs.

It's almost like the military has thought about this and modified their capabilities over the last 240 years.

[dramatic flare]

I am searching for, and having a little trouble finding, accessible descriptions/details of late-medieval to renaissance infantry formation tactics. I can find all sorts of manuals on individual fighting (mostly through HEMA related websites or similar) and, if only through documentaries and other representations, know something about Roman or early medieval tactics, but specifically trying to figure out what landsknechts or Spanish Thirds did beyond the basics is a little frustrating.

For instance, I know the landsknechts used a front line of heavy armor with zweihanders or halberds backed up with ranks and ranks of halberds, that the halberds usually have spiked points on the bottom end to impale wounded foes as they marched over them, and that they never really learned gun tactics. But this is all material related to the equipment the landknechts had available and says very little about what they were trained to do when the fight starts.

Any good papers/books out there?

[Brother Oni]

Any good papers/books out there?

Are you after western countries only or does your interest extend to the Far East as well? I have a fair bit of information on Sengoku-era samurai armies that I collated for a post in an earlier thread that I can dig up again.

[gkathellar]

What do folks here think of this?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3yvOkooYA

To me, it looks more like boxing than anything else (with its attendant virtues and vices as a depiction of reality), but I'm not a good judge of armored combat.

[dramatic flare]

Are you after western countries only or does your interest extend to the Far East as well? I have a fair bit of information on Sengoku-era samurai armies that I collated for a post in an earlier thread that I can dig up again.

It can't hurt. My primary interest is Europe though.

[Mike_G]

What do folks here think of this?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3yvOkooYA

To me, it looks more like boxing than anything else (with its attendant virtues and vices as a depiction of reality), but I'm not a good judge of armored combat.

It does look a lot like boxing. It looks like a lot of it comes down to endurance.

My feeling is that in a real fight, if I couldn't cut the guy with my sword, I think I'd try to throw him down and stab him through the gaps in his armor, which I'm sure is against the rules here, because they probably don't want to really kill one another.

But that's me, coming from a background of unarmored fighting where getting hit represents getting wounded or killed. I don't know how you would score armored fighting "realistically."

[Max_Killjoy]

It does look a lot like boxing. It looks like a lot of it comes down to endurance.

My feeling is that in a real fight, if I couldn't cut the guy with my sword, I think I'd try to throw him down and stab him through the gaps in his armor, which I'm sure is against the rules here, because they probably don't want to really kill one another.

But that's me, coming from a background of unarmored fighting where getting hit represents getting wounded or killed. I don't know how you would score armored fighting "realistically."


I've seen a lot of discussion of fighting while heavily armored, by those who should know, that involves exactly that -- grappling, takedowns, holds, etc, to get your opponent into a vulnerable position.

[Vinyadan]

Yes, that's typical of that sport - you see moments in which a stab could end it, but it actually can't, because stabs aren't allowed.

[fusilier]

It can't hurt. My primary interest is Europe though.

I've been looking for similar information myself, but there seems to be little available. Swiss and German Landsknechts are going to be easier to find info on, but that might be later than you are looking for. I'm guessing the Tercios of the 16th century are also too late? (There's some decent information on them) Most of what I find might refer to proportions in the unit but not how they were actually arranged in formation.

I have read a description of the infantry of the mid 15th century Hungarian "Black Army", that went something along the following:

The front rank consisted of well armored pikemen. The second rank were the shield bearers (probably with large shield and spear). The third rank were the crossbowmen/handgunners. Obviously, they must have allowed the crossbowmen to the front to fire, but it seems like this was supposed to be the formation when they entered hand-to-hand.

There's an Italian blog (http://stemmieimprese.it) which gives a very similar description of infantry at the battle of Piombino (1448). The main difference is that with the crossbowmen/hangunners were mixed in more shield-bearers and pikemen -- apparently to serve as replacements in melee. The descriptions are so similar, I suspect they are really describing the same practice.

On the same blog there's another post which states that they began to divide the infantry into assault units and missile units around the middle of the 15th century (at least in Italy). Sword and shield men were introduced to deal with the increased use of field fortifications, and the traditional division of infantry into thirds (pikes/lances, shield-bearers, crossbowmen) began to give way to this new system. He doesn't go into specifics, but it seems to be implying that they started to field the assault and missile troops in separate specific units rather than mixed units. But no information on how many ranks they formed, or how they were supposed to support each other on the field.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes, that's typical of that sport - you see moments in which a stab could end it, but it actually can't, because stabs aren't allowed.

Which kinda makes the whole thing a joke.

[rrgg]

I am searching for, and having a little trouble finding, accessible descriptions/details of late-medieval to renaissance infantry formation tactics. I can find all sorts of manuals on individual fighting (mostly through HEMA related websites or similar) and, if only through documentaries and other representations, know something about Roman or early medieval tactics, but specifically trying to figure out what landsknechts or Spanish Thirds did beyond the basics is a little frustrating.

For instance, I know the landsknechts used a front line of heavy armor with zweihanders or halberds backed up with ranks and ranks of halberds, that the halberds usually have spiked points on the bottom end to impale wounded foes as they marched over them, and that they never really learned gun tactics. But this is all material related to the equipment the landknechts had available and says very little about what they were trained to do when the fight starts.

Any good papers/books out there?


As usual with medieval combat the exact specifics might be kind of hard to come by. It isn't until the late 16th century that we start seeing a whole lot of military treatises being widely printed on tactics and formations. Plus, as usual tactics varied based on

Probably the biggest shift between late medieval and Renaissance/very early modern melee infantry tactics was the rise of great pike squares. While the middle ages generally saw long, continuous lines of mixed infantry 4-8 ranks deep, the pike squares first popularized by the Swiss sometime in the 1400s might involve up to 10,000 men in a single 100x100 square. Disciplined soldiers arranged in a square or even a column could advance more quickly and maintain cohesion better than a long line could. In addition seeing the center of their line being driven back by the mass of a charging pike square was frequently enough to cause a cascade of panic that routed the entire enemy army. Initially the Swiss were using mostly halberds but switched to pikes as the French knights adopted longer lances and later switched to even longer pikes as their enemies started using pikemen of their own. By the late 15th century the landsknechts were more or less an exact copy of the Swiss, to the point where many writers talk about 'Swiss' and 'German' infantry tactics interchangeably.

During a Push of Pike the troops armed with the "shorter weapons" (halberd, partisan, bill, zwiehander, sword and target, etc.) were generally just positioned in the center of the square in order to protect the colors and add more mass push. However they might also be used to protect the flanks during a fight, or they might be detached and mixed in with the shot in order to help protect them in melee and serve as light infantry. They were also more useful than the pikes for fighting over broken terrain and chasing after routed enemies. During the Italian wars for instance the Spanish swordsmen were often quite effective at cutting up the Swiss after their formation had been broken up by ditches and gunfire, and at the Battle of Flodden English Billmen were able to get the better of Scottish pikemen who were unable to keep a strong footing on the slopes. The Spanish Tercio tends to be best known for it's massive bastioned square formations but in reality it was a fairly flexible formation with divisions all the way down to 25 man platoons which could potentially be detached and operate independently.

At around 1500 AD shot still played a relatively small role in the pike and shot formations. Swiss and German infantry at this time only included about 1/10th shot. The early Tercios were about 3/6ths pike, 2/6ths swordsmen, and 1/6th shot. Over the course of the Italian Wars and the rest of the century as shot proved its effectiveness it steadily comprised a larger and larger proportion of armies. the shorter weapons like halberds and swordsmen also became less common as the shot became better at serving as light infantry on their own. Eventually towards the end of the 16th century the great squares started falling out in favor of multiple smaller squares winged by sleeves of shot which were arranged in a checkerboard, triplex acies-inspired formation to support each other and allow for better use of shot and an orderly withdrawl of each battalion if it is defeated.

Some sources:

"European Warfare, 1350–1750" has a good essay on how infantry tactics changed over the course of the early modern period.

"Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe" by Hall goes into a lot of detail about the introduction of gunpowder to warfare.

This is an older book, but you can read "The art of war in Italy, 1494-1529" by FL Taylor online. It gives a good overview of all the changes that occurred during the Italian Wars.

For late 16th century views on weapons and tactics you might be interested in looking up english writers on the subject such as Roger Williams, Sir John Smythe, William Garrard, Robert Barret, and Humfrey Barwick.

[Coidzor]

Have bricks ever been used to make fortifications? If so, what sorts of things did they stand up to vs. being defeated by? If not, well, what could they stand up to and what would tear through them like nothing else?

How thick would a brick wall need to be in order to be resistant to attack, say, from early siege weapons at the one end and against the kind of cannon that were in service circa 1850 for the high end?

[Gnoman]

Bricks are not designed to withstand sharp focused impacts, nor is the mortar used to put them together all that effective against such forces. A single blow from an ordinary hammer will shatter a brick, while the sort of stones that quickly proved wholly inadequate against cannon fire are more likely to break the hammer.

[fusilier]

Have bricks ever been used to make fortifications? If so, what sorts of things did they stand up to vs. being defeated by? If not, well, what could they stand up to and what would tear through them like nothing else?

How thick would a brick wall need to be in order to be resistant to attack, say, from early siege weapons at the one end and against the kind of cannon that were in service circa 1850 for the high end?

Brick was a common material to make fortifications from in the 19th century, it performed reasonably well against the cannon of the time. The rifled cannon introduced in the mid 19th century made short work of them, however. Many American coastal fortresses, which saw combat in the American Civil War, were made from brick.

[dramatic flare]

I've been looking for similar information myself, but there seems to be little available. Swiss and German Landsknechts are going to be easier to find info on, but that might be later than you are looking for. I'm guessing the Tercios of the 16th century are also too late? (There's some decent information on them) Most of what I find might refer to proportions in the unit but not how they were actually arranged in formation.

I have read a description of the infantry of the mid 15th century Hungarian "Black Army", that went something along the following:

The front rank consisted of well armored pikemen. The second rank were the shield bearers (probably with large shield and spear). The third rank were the crossbowmen/handgunners. Obviously, they must have allowed the crossbowmen to the front to fire, but it seems like this was supposed to be the formation when they entered hand-to-hand.

There's an Italian blog (http://stemmieimprese.it) which gives a very similar description of infantry at the battle of Piombino (1448). The main difference is that with the crossbowmen/hangunners were mixed in more shield-bearers and pikemen -- apparently to serve as replacements in melee. The descriptions are so similar, I suspect they are really describing the same practice.

On the same blog there's another post which states that they began to divide the infantry into assault units and missile units around the middle of the 15th century (at least in Italy). Sword and shield men were introduced to deal with the increased use of field fortifications, and the traditional division of infantry into thirds (pikes/lances, shield-bearers, crossbowmen) began to give way to this new system. He doesn't go into specifics, but it seems to be implying that they started to field the assault and missile troops in separate specific units rather than mixed units. But no information on how many ranks they formed, or how they were supposed to support each other on the field.

Landsknecht and Swiss Pikemen would be useful to me, though Spanish tercios would be a bit late as I understand they incorporated a lot more guns into their tactics than their immediate predecessors did. On the other hand, Tercios would be useful if the information provided could result in easy interchange for other types of shot weapons. Like I mention in my first post, my problem with the information I have related to the Landsknecht is it is all equipment related. This is absolutely important, but not the whole picture.

My goal is to represent both in tabletop rpg and possibly in LARP the type of challenge such an infantry block would represent where 1: shields are scarce, and 2:armor, discipline, and some mixed unit flexibility are strong. I've been mulling over a few methods for representing proper military formations as a challenge to mid-level adventuring parties, and this could help the most accurate of my ideas.



Some sources:

"European Warfare, 1350–1750" has a good essay on how infantry tactics changed over the course of the early modern period.

"Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe" by Hall goes into a lot of detail about the introduction of gunpowder to warfare.

This is an older book, but you can read "The art of war in Italy, 1494-1529" by FL Taylor online. It gives a good overview of all the changes that occurred during the Italian Wars.

For late 16th century views on weapons and tactics you might be interested in looking up english writers on the subject such as Roger Williams, Sir John Smythe, William Garrard, Robert Barret, and Humfrey Barwick.
Noted. I'm especially interested in the art of war in italy book, if only because it seems the right type to tease out useful data.


Thanks for your help, both of you.

[GraaEminense]

Many Indian forts are brick from what I recall, and while they were a significant speed-bump they could not stand up to 19th Century artillery in the wars of the British and the Honourable East India Company in India.

It must be said though, most of these fortifications were old and not built to resist cannon.

[Vinyadan]

the Auerelian Walls of Rome were made of bricks, as well as the Farnese walls of Piacenza.

[Brother Oni]

My goal is to represent both in tabletop rpg and possibly in LARP the type of challenge such an infantry block would represent where 1: shields are scarce, and 2:armor, discipline, and some mixed unit flexibility are strong. I've been mulling over a few methods for representing proper military formations as a challenge to mid-level adventuring parties, and this could help the most accurate of my ideas.

Samurai unit formations are much looser than the European ones so are of probably limited use to you; for example samurai spear formations essentially consist of multiple 2-3 man teams (samurai with 1-2 ashigaru supporters) vaguely grouped together rather than a solid shield wall of spearmen from the Saxons and Normans of mid-Medieval era or the later pike blocks described by fusilier and rrgg.

[Kiero]

Traditionally you break the other formation by killing enough of them that they run away. That hasn't really changed much except that modern tech is obviously much better at killing them. Back in the day you might shower them with arrows in rotation until they've 'softened up' and then charge with cavalry. Now you might hit them with artillery and then send in armoured infantry.

My limited understanding is that modern military tactics favour hitting the enemy with overwhelming force and using combined arms as force multipliers. But really that's nothing particularly new.

So for example ambushing the enemy, killing a bunch of them before they can respond and then charging at them, is an effective way to disperse enemy formations. But that's because it's a great way to kill a lot of them in a chaotic environment which they don't control.

An inhumanly disciplined army has a major advantage because often units break up after only taking mild casualties. That said, the inhumanly disciplined guys also need to be able to effectively hurt the enemy. The Unsullied vs. say a bunch of ancient Egyptian warriors would probably go pretty well. Against a modern army, not so much.

No, you don't break them by killing "enough of them" though that can factor into it. You break them by destroying their will to fight. Or creating a situation where they think fleeing is the only way they'll get out of the battle alive. Sometimes merely having cavalry appearing behind a formation could be enough to break them, if they weren't particularly keen on fighting (like levies).

Decent defensive equipment and the right sort of esprit de corps can go a long way in this regard. Greek hoplites, contrasting to most of the unarmoured and often unshielded infantry available to the ancient Persians, is a good example. They could hold against much larger numbers of more poorly-equipped infantry because of the way they were equipped and trained, and the social bonds between them.


I guess more strategic ways to break the enemy are to bribe them to stop fighting, deny them supplies or money or simply go around them while you work on the main mission.

Lots of this whenever mercenaries are involved, persuading them to change to the side of the victor, rather than fight to the death or try to disengage was common.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

A few questions: What is the current average deployable independent unit in the US army? Is it the Brigade Combat Team, or a whole Division? If it's a Division, how far do Brigade Combat Teams range from each other in a deployment? I.e., if Brigade Combat Team A is in Kandahar, is Brigade Combat Team B also in Kandahar, is it in neighbouring Lashkar Gah, is it moderately far away in Herat, or super far away in, say, Kunduz? Or even deployed completely elsewhere?

Is this level of deployability roughly true for most modern militaries?

Does this deployability also hold true for earlier eras? I.e., 1980s, 70s, 50s?

Lastly, what different specializations do you have for Divisions / Brigades. You have Armoured (focusing on M1A1 Abrams and the support thereof, Mechanized (heavy infantry), Marine (light infantry focusing on... not amphibious assault anymore, but air assault?), Air Assault (focusing on helicopter insertion with heavy helicopter support. Includes Airborne, Marine, and Cavalry Divisions), Airborne (which can specialize in either Paratrooper or Air Assault)... what am I missing? Is there non-airborne non-mechanized infantry still?

[Berenger]

Have bricks ever been used to make fortifications?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbork_Castle

[Vinyadan]

Lots of bricks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narin_Qal%27eh

[MrZJunior]

Have bricks ever been used to make fortifications? If so, what sorts of things did they stand up to vs. being defeated by? If not, well, what could they stand up to and what would tear through them like nothing else?

How thick would a brick wall need to be in order to be resistant to attack, say, from early siege weapons at the one end and against the kind of cannon that were in service circa 1850 for the high end?

Most definitly; most ancient cities in the Fertile Cresent region would have had walls made out of mud brick.

As mentioned previously, the Aurelian Walls of Rome were built out of brick in the late Imperial period and defended the city up until 1871 when it was anexed by the Kingdom of Italy. The walls withstood several hours of bombardment before crumbling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelian_Walls

Brick was a very common material for making star forts out of. It was considered by some engineers to be a superior material to stone because brick will crumble under cannon fire unlike stone which will shatter under impact sending harmful slivers of rock everywhere. The relative weakness of brick vs stone is not so important since they both hold up the dirt which absorbs the impact just as well. However, the most important consideration when choosing a material to build your fort out of was availability. Many of the forts detailed in this website are built out of brick:

http://www.fortified-places.com/

I believe that there are also examples of such forts where just the parapets are made out of brick.

[Carl]

So you see why I kinda lost it when you said we were "in search of a mission" and the job of teh MEU could be done by an Airborne unit.

The MEU is a versatile tool for US foreign policy, able to respond to any hotspot or humanitarian crisis, with a lot of support and capabilities. There are a couple of them floating out there right now, probably close to the places the intelligence community expects trouble.

There's no other unit that can do the job as well.

But those units have other, different jobs.

It's almost like the military has thought about this and modified their capabilities over the last 240 years.

A few days late getting back to you, but absolutely. Like i said various equipment related articles had given me a completely ass backwards impression of the kind of heavy kit you had, (numerous articles have implied the USMC has no MBT's or similar because (paraphrasing), the article will say "this is of particular interest to the USMC as it provides a capability normally unavailable to them" when talking about somthing that MBT's or a properly kitted Attack helicopter absolutely can and do provide. When you've got that skewed an idea of kit it skews your view badly in terms of appreciation of capabilities. Seriously either those article writers need a bonk on the noggin, or someone in the UISMC upper ranks who's expressing this interest needs to check their own equipment lists...

[Max_Killjoy]

Military procurement has its own language that looks like English, but largely isn't.

"this is of particular interest to the USMC as it provides a capability normally unavailable to them" is a very peculiar phrase that can, in procurement circles, be based on a very, um, interesting and literal meaning of "we don't have this capability". As in (totally hypothetical here) a new sniper rifle can accurate hit targets at 3000 feet... if the old rifle is accurate to 2950 feet, the new rifle can be said in procurement-speak to provide a capability that they don't currently have. :smalleek:

[Mike_G]

A few days late getting back to you, but absolutely. Like i said various equipment related articles had given me a completely ass backwards impression of the kind of heavy kit you had, (numerous articles have implied the USMC has no MBT's or similar because (paraphrasing), the article will say "this is of particular interest to the USMC as it provides a capability normally unavailable to them" when talking about somthing that MBT's or a properly kitted Attack helicopter absolutely can and do provide. When you've got that skewed an idea of kit it skews your view badly in terms of appreciation of capabilities. Seriously either those article writers need a bonk on the noggin, or someone in the UISMC upper ranks who's expressing this interest needs to check their own equipment lists...

Marine equipment often lags behind the Army. For example, the marines still had M-60 MBTs when originally deployed to Kuwait in the first Gulf War, when the Army had been using the M1 for some time. So that kind of thing might have given the impression that the Marine lack something the Army has. I don't know if the USMC tanks are a generation behind still.

Marines are more designed as flexible light infantry. The Army has heavier units, more mechanized infantry, a dedicated IFV and so on.

But we've had tanks in the TOE since WWII.

[Sapphire Guard]

Hi folks. Related question to the last one. How much ammunition is reasonably supplied to a mounted machine gun? Obviously the answer is going to be 'it depends' but just for a ballpark figure, for a position that is expecting heavy combat for a few days, at what point does extra ammunition become redundant or an obstacle. What are the crew of a fixed gun likely to have to hand without resupplying, give or take? Thanks.

[fusilier]

Landsknecht and Swiss Pikemen would be useful to me, though Spanish tercios would be a bit late as I understand they incorporated a lot more guns into their tactics than their immediate predecessors did. On the other hand, Tercios would be useful if the information provided could result in easy interchange for other types of shot weapons. Like I mention in my first post, my problem with the information I have related to the Landsknecht is it is all equipment related. This is absolutely important, but not the whole picture.

My goal is to represent both in tabletop rpg and possibly in LARP the type of challenge such an infantry block would represent where 1: shields are scarce, and 2:armor, discipline, and some mixed unit flexibility are strong. I've been mulling over a few methods for representing proper military formations as a challenge to mid-level adventuring parties, and this could help the most accurate of my ideas.

You might want to try the Osprey books about Landsknechts and swiss pikemen (reislaufer?) -- I would have to double check them myself, but they should have more of that info. The usual caveats about Osprey books apply -- they are a good starting point, but need to be evaluated independently and not taken as gospel.

For the small level stuff that you are talking about, however, it's probably going to be really difficult. The tactics that are reported are usually large scale, formations involving hundreds to thousands of pikemen, etc. A lot of those tactics don't work on the small scale. There's a scene in The New World which shows a small group of English pikemen trying to fight using basic mass tactics against the Powhatans, and it just doesn't work.

Maurizio Arfaioli's thesis on the Black Bands of Giovanni di'Medici really filled in a lot of gaps for me -- but that's specifically about early 16th skirmishers focusing on arquebusiers. That might be insightful though: the arquebusiers would skirmish in a kind loose but deep formation (better to keep up "constant" fire). On their flanks would be posted halberdiers. If they were attacked by cavalry, the arquebusiers would crowd together and the halberdiers would surround them -- then they would try to retreat to the pike block.

During the American Civil War, and something reenactors practice from time-to-time, is the so called "rally". When caught disorganized, or simply needing to retreat more quickly than formations would allow, the soldiers would literally rally around an officer or some command group. Forming a kind of rough circle of soldiers with their muskets/bayonets pointed outward. Relatively small groups would do this: you might be surrounded, but you won't be flanked. This is important if the enemy has closed, and your flanks aren't secured.



Noted. I'm especially interested in the art of war in italy book, if only because it seems the right type to tease out useful data.


Thanks for your help, both of you.

There's a more modern work worth checking out too - The Italian Wars 1494-1559, by Mallet and Shaw, but it doesn't cover that level of tactics either. It's nice in that it covers the later wars, which are rarely covered by English sources.

Mallett's book on Condottieri Mercenaries and their Masters is pretty good at explaining the evolution of the "Lance" in Italy during the 15th century. That kind of information might be pretty useful for you -- it's not how the troops were deployed in battle, but it could reflect the kinds soldiers you might find together in small groups.

[Garimeth]

A few questions: What is the current average deployable independent unit in the US army? Is it the Brigade Combat Team, or a whole Division? If it's a Division, how far do Brigade Combat Teams range from each other in a deployment? I.e., if Brigade Combat Team A is in Kandahar, is Brigade Combat Team B also in Kandahar, is it in neighbouring Lashkar Gah, is it moderately far away in Herat, or super far away in, say, Kunduz? Or even deployed completely elsewhere?

Is this level of deployability roughly true for most modern militaries?

Does this deployability also hold true for earlier eras? I.e., 1980s, 70s, 50s?

Lastly, what different specializations do you have for Divisions / Brigades. You have Armoured (focusing on M1A1 Abrams and the support thereof, Mechanized (heavy infantry), Marine (light infantry focusing on... not amphibious assault anymore, but air assault?), Air Assault (focusing on helicopter insertion with heavy helicopter support. Includes Airborne, Marine, and Cavalry Divisions), Airborne (which can specialize in either Paratrooper or Air Assault)... what am I missing? Is there non-airborne non-mechanized infantry still?

Your initial question is too broad and vague. The size of the element is going to depend on what's needed. Maybe the whole battalion is going, but maybe only a platoon because its an advise and assist mission. When I was in Afghanistan I was with the Marines, and I was part of Regimental Combat Team 5 out of Camp Dwyer, which would be the equivalent of a BCT. Our counterpart was RCT 6 in Camp Delaram. You can look these up to get an idea of the distance. That having been said, its going to be mission dependent. Within a year of me leaving that whole area was covered by one RCT, because that's what the mission said. The level of deployability, in terms of area occupied, depends largely on the security of your supply chain, the ability to effectively communicate, and density and fortification of the enemy. In Helmand province one battalion can cover a wide area, because we have air superiority and its a wide open rural area. In Ramadi the same place would have a much smaller area to cover.

I assume this has always been the case, the terrain will dictate what you can do with what you have.

Lastly, 10th Mountain Division, to my knowledge - I'm a fleet guy, is non mechanized and non airborne infantry.

[Garimeth]

Hi folks. Related question to the last one. How much ammunition is reasonably supplied to a mounted machine gun? Obviously the answer is going to be 'it depends' but just for a ballpark figure, for a position that is expecting heavy combat for a few days, at what point does extra ammunition become redundant or an obstacle. What are the crew of a fixed gun likely to have to hand without resupplying, give or take? Thanks.

I think it will largely depend on how recently they showed up, and how fortified the position is, but by way of example these are the loadouts of a couple of vehicle mounted ones in the USMC:
LAV- 25 (25mm chain gun) 400 ready rounds, 1200 more stowed.
LAV models using the 240 have 200 ready 800 stowed.
Infantry weapons platoon has 6 50 cals and 6 MK19s, no idea how much ammo they are carrying.

But yeah, it will vary based largely off the situation.

[gkathellar]

Given that we have the Marines, why exactly do the Navy Seals exist? What is their purpose, in theory and in practice?

[Gnoman]

SEAL teams are small combat units designed for rapid there-and-back-again strikes against small targets, aggressive coastline recon, and similar short-duration missions. The Marine Corps is an assault force intended for medium-duration heavy combat at an army level. Completely different missions.

[Mike_G]

Given that we have the Marines, why exactly do the Navy Seals exist? What is their purpose, in theory and in practice?

The SEALs grew from the UDT (Underwater Demolition Teams) who would plant explosives on enemy ships, underwater obstacles and do recon of landing beaches. Very specialized Navy personnel. The actual transition to a Special Forces unit was in the 1960s, when the Kennedy administration got all lathered up about commandos and using special forces working with local proxies to fight the Cold War.

The Marines are more of a line infantry unit. There has been some institutional resistance to special units in the Marines, since the Corps is supposed to be an elite fighting force anyway. The history of the Marine raiders in WWII is interesting look at this debate. Now, Marine Recon is kind of Special Forces, because every service has some specific tasks they want there own operators to be really good at.

The SEALs train for Navy specific jobs, while Foprce Recon trains for USMC jobs, the Amry Special Forces have their own specialties, and so on.

Now, I was a plain old grunt, and I think that good, motivated infantry, if you beat some sense and discipline into them, can do most of what special forces can, but that's a very controversial position. The SF guys have a lot more training in very specific things, but they're very expensive, and they are very political, and so they get used wrong a lot, and pride gets in the way a lot. Look at Panama and Grenada for times the SEALs probably got used for missions they shouldn't have and lost men they probably didn't have to. And look at the rescue of downed Pilot Scott O'Grady in Bosnia, which was carried out by plain old vanilla Marines because they were close and available.

[Beleriphon]

Given that we have the Marines, why exactly do the Navy Seals exist? What is their purpose, in theory and in practice?

Highly mobile offensive force meant to insert into a hostile zone in very small teams that train specifically for a wide variety of small team combat scenarios. Marines don't generally train for HALO jumps, under water demolitions, and a variety of specialized combat tasks where an entire battalion can't be reasonablly trained to achieve the same results.

In essence the SEALs are the Navy extension of the ideas that bred WWII commandos like the Devils Brigade.

In practice SEALs, and other other special forces operates like JTF2, SAS, Green Berets, Spetsnaz, Jagdkommando, or KSK are typically tasked with handling operations where regular military units aren't suited to operate. For example a full marine contingent could scout and complete the same objectives, but the regular training for the USMC doesn't really follow less that a platoon level of deployment for most objectives, while SEALs are specifically trained in handling operations with as few as four members.

To a degree US Navy SEALs and similar US special forces operators are basically D&D adventuring parties as far as the way they tend to handle tasks. A SEAL team can't hold a city by themselves, and they'd be hard pressed to even hold an entire building against attackers. They're poorly suited to attacking an enemy that knows they're coming. But infiltration using a wide, and weird, variety of means and then killing everything they encounter room by room is an ideal task for a team of Navy SEALs.

Incidentally, the really crazy stuff the SEALs get up to is generally covered by what used to be SEAL Team 6, and is now DEVGRU (Joint Operation Command, that has ties to the CIA).

[Brother Oni]

In practice SEALs, and other other special forces operates like JTF2, SAS, Green Berets, Spetsnaz, Jagdkommando, or KSK are typically tasked with handling operations where regular military units aren't suited to operate. For example a full marine contingent could scout and complete the same objectives, but the regular training for the USMC doesn't really follow less that a platoon level of deployment for most objectives, while SEALs are specifically trained in handling operations with as few as four members.

To build on this, there's also a distinction between how different special forces groups operate.

I was reading Task Force Black by Mark Urban, which discussed the SAS's role in Iraq and it made the separation between tier 1 special forces (SAS, SBS, Delta, DEVGRU, etc) and tier 2 special forces (SEALs, Marine Recon, Rangers, Special Forces, etc). The tier 1 units mostly operated independently to identify high value/priority targets, work out where they are or where they'd be then go either capture or kill them (Find, Fix and Finish).
Later on in the war, information gathering became so critical to the mission to the point that it was sole purpose of some raids and the analysis of the recovered information became so streamlined, intel from one raid was processed and used to plan, initiate and execute a new raid the following night (Exploit, Analyse and Disseminate).
There's quite a few articles online about the whole process under the acronym F3EAD.

Special forces operators also go off on trouble shooting missions - Sniper One by Dan Mills covers his encounter with one such operator and his Royal Marine spotter. A British Army group based out of a FOB was having problems with mortar teams and their associated forward spotters (the mortar teams lurked out of sight behind buildings/terrain or out of the ~1km range of British snipers' L96s and the unarmed spotters or dickers, knew the Coalition ROE well enough to know what to do to not get shot), so a sniper team armed with a Barrett M82 came up to give them a hand.
Between the additional range of their weapon (~1.8 km) and a change in the ROE allowing them to shoot the aforementioned dickers (plus the operator getting a mate to call in an airstrike for him), the mortar problems reduced rapidly.

British special forces tend to be a lot more secretive about their activities (the aforementioned sniper pair introduced themselves as Marine John Withers and Buzz - no rank or affiliation, just Buzz), so it can be difficult to work out what they're up until years after the fact and information has been declassified (and sometimes not even then). As examples, medals awarded to individual SAS soldiers are made to the regiment as a whole instead and SAS kitbags during transport can be labelled as plainly as 'Mike, A Coy, Hereford'.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I was asking cuz I'm mocking up the systems for a realistic Cold War strategy game, and I'm basing it to a large extent off the Paradox games Victoria (for economy and politics), and Hearts of Iron (for combat and some political systems). HoI has the Division be the smallest individually selecteable unit in the game. It might be best to keep it at that, and assume that smaller deployments are abstracteable. It would cut down on the number of units on the map, especially during hot flashes in the war.

[gkathellar]

I was asking cuz I'm mocking up the systems for a realistic Cold War strategy game, and I'm basing it to a large extent off the Paradox games Victoria (for economy and politics), and Hearts of Iron (for combat and some political systems). HoI has the Division be the smallest individually selecteable unit in the game. It might be best to keep it at that, and assume that smaller deployments are abstracteable. It would cut down on the number of units on the map, especially during hot flashes in the war.

Maybe you could treat smaller deployments as powers or events, rather than units - special commands that consume time or resources in return for strategic advantages. It would certainly fit with the in-and-out, task-oriented nature of special forces as characterized above.

[Kiero]

One other specialised role that special forces do is training local irregulars. While regular soldiers can be employed to train local soldiers in regular warfare, it's left to special forces to train guerillas and the like.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Maybe you could treat smaller deployments as powers or events, rather than units - special commands that consume time or resources in return for strategic advantages. It would certainly fit with the in-and-out, task-oriented nature of special forces as characterized above.


One other specialised role that special forces do is training local irregulars. While regular soldiers can be employed to train local soldiers in regular warfare, it's left to special forces to train guerillas and the like.

I think gkathellar's idea is a good one. Training missions like Kiero points out could be well modelled via abstracted abilities. Now the question is what abilities (CT and Training are good ones, but it doesn't fit with how I previously modelled CT, which I'm pretty happy about), and how they should be triggered (i.e. do you select the brigade, select the mission, and then select the target, or do you select the target, select the mission, then select the brigade... Both sound kinda micro-heavy) but that's not really a question for this thread.

[Vinyadan]

I was taking a look at a video about MCLC in Afghanistan. One of the Marines manning the Assault Breach Vehicle was more than sunburnt, he was pretty much vermilion. Do armed forces deliver sunscreen products to servicemen? And, in general, what self-care or hygiene products are provided?

[oudeis]

This is more a generic historical question, but since most of history seems to involve territorial conflicts and warfare I figured here was a good place to post this.

In the numerous 'Evil Race' threads that seem to crop up on this forum there are frequent dismissive referrals to Planet of Hats (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats) and monocultural societies and such, especially in regards to races that are commonly represented as evil, warlike, and xenophobic. I don't understand the rancor surrounding this topic because it's been my understanding that ancient Human nations, especially those that didn't have tolerance forced on them by the economic necessites of trade, behaved in essentially this manner to outsiders and interlopers. Is this incorrect? I've always been under the impression that tribal societies had entirely different notions of right and wrong behavior when it came to how one treated other members of your society and how you treated foreigners.

[snowblizz]

This is more a generic historical question, but since most of history seems to involve territorial conflicts and warfare I figured here was a good place to post this.

In the numerous 'Evil Race' threads that seem to crop up on this forum there are frequent dismissive referrals to Planet of Hats (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats) and monocultural societies and such, especially in regards to races that are commonly represented as evil, warlike, and xenophobic. I don't understand the rancor surrounding this topic because it's been my understanding that ancient Human nations, especially those that didn't have tolerance forced on them by the economic necessites of trade, behaved in essentially this manner to outsiders and interlopers. Is this incorrect? I've always been under the impression that tribal societies had entirely different notions of right and wrong behavior when it came to how one treated other members of your society and how you treated foreigners.

Planet of Hat is probably best viewed as social commentary and complaining about lazy sci-fi writing.

Also I object to the idea that tolerence is forced, quite the contrary often. And that's the crux of the planet of hat argumwnt, societies are generally more complex than depicted.

It's neither correct nor incorrect, many societies tended to favour the closer group (I'd point out we still do this, that is what a nation state is but dunno if we veer to close to off-limit topics) and had different rules for "close" or "distant" "relations". But that didn't necessarily mean you did. Sometimes eg the consideration stretches outside a tribe to a social group of peers (eg nobility). Few real world examples of "evil races" (tm) were long lived because that behaviour tends to cause everyone else to gang up on you and get rid of you.

[Storm Bringer]

I was taking a look at a video about MCLC in Afghanistan. One of the Marines manning the Assault Breach Vehicle was more than sunburnt, he was pretty much vermilion. Do armed forces deliver sunscreen products to servicemen? And, in general, what self-care or hygiene products are provided?

Speaking for the brits:

troops are issued (or can get issued if they ask) with things like sunscreen, but its up to the individual to use it if they require it. most dont bother, as they either don't burn much, or they are on Op Bronze (aka working on the tan)

On the flip side, its a punishable offense to be unfit for duty because your so sun burnt you cant put your Armour or helmet on. The UK take is that sunburn is self inflicted wound, and as such its technically dereliction of duty the same as turning up drunk, or breaking a leg to get out of patrols*.

The same is true with soaps and shower gel. almost everyone uses commercial stuff (often taken from care packages), rather than the (rather dire) issued stuff. On top of the official punishments for being unfit for duty because your toes are rotting off, theirs a added social pressure form the people who are forced to share with the smelly man, and the fact that one man with poor hygiene can bring a whole unit down with gut rot spread by his unhygienic ways.

Suffice to say, if a man is not showering enough, he may just get thrown in front of a hosepipe or dumped in the water tanks to...remind him of the importance of washing.

Soldiers have a very direct way of sorting out issues when left to their own devices.



*obviously, they don't punish it quite as severely as a bloke who shot himself to get out of duty, but the principle is that they are both the same in that the soldiers actions have rendered him unfit for duty.

[Beleriphon]

This is more a generic historical question, but since most of history seems to involve territorial conflicts and warfare I figured here was a good place to post this.

In the numerous 'Evil Race' threads that seem to crop up on this forum there are frequent dismissive referrals to Planet of Hats (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats) and monocultural societies and such, especially in regards to races that are commonly represented as evil, warlike, and xenophobic. I don't understand the rancor surrounding this topic because it's been my understanding that ancient Human nations, especially those that didn't have tolerance forced on them by the economic necessities of trade, behaved in essentially this manner to outsiders and interlopers. Is this incorrect? I've always been under the impression that tribal societies had entirely different notions of right and wrong behavior when it came to how one treated other members of your society and how you treated foreigners.

Plant of the Hats isn't bad, necessarily. A species on a single world that is there long enough is probably going to end up with a monoculture. We haven't really had global communication long enough for it to happen, but I fully expect to there to be a single Earth government at some point in the future. Even if you take into account ancient cultures prior to global mass communication they still adopted cultural aspects from each other, so the idea that eventually an entire sapient species shares the same culture isn't necessarily bad.

If you look at Ferengi in Star Trek the first time we see them the crew of the Ferengi are avaricious to a ridiculous degree, but then they are a crewing warship that seems more like a bunch of pirates. When we get bad Planet of the Hats happening is when all Ferengi are obsessed with profit, and in fact their entire society becomes a Aesop for capitalism.

Star Wars Legends material is even worse, it turns single instance characters into the way the entire species of that character function. All Rodians are bounty hunters because Greedo, and all Hutts are gangsters.

[MrZJunior]

I remember reading an account of a naval battle in WWII where the shells had some sort of dye in them to mark where they hit and aid in visual range finding. I've never heard of it anywhere else, was this ever actually done?

As a follow-up, would it be possible to cause the smoke from an explosion of a conventional artillery shell to be colored? For instance if you have two guns in a battery one might have blue coloured smoke, the other red. I think this would aid in dialing in the range on the guns because you would be better able to figure out how each gun needs to be adjusted.

[Gnoman]

It was introduced in the interwar period for the specific purpose of identifying which shell bursts belonged to which ship, greatly aiding fire correction. The US had dye tipped shells by 1924, France developed them in the '30s, the Japanese Empire by 1941, and the Royal Navy introduced them in 1942.

On land there would be much less benefit, because the land isn't a featureless plane, interfering with direct observation but also providing reference landmarks.


(Edited because I'm not on my phone anymore and can thus do some research instead of relying on memory).

[gkathellar]

In the numerous 'Evil Race' threads that seem to crop up on this forum there are frequent dismissive referrals to Planet of Hats (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats) and monocultural societies and such, especially in regards to races that are commonly represented as evil, warlike, and xenophobic. I don't understand the rancor surrounding this topic because it's been my understanding that ancient Human nations, especially those that didn't have tolerance forced on them by the economic necessites of trade, behaved in essentially this manner to outsiders and interlopers. Is this incorrect? I've always been under the impression that tribal societies had entirely different notions of right and wrong behavior when it came to how one treated other members of your society and how you treated foreigners.

It's incorrect as a general statement. There are absolutely "tribal" societies (insofar as that's a phrase with any meaning) that have little or no tolerance for outgroup persons, but there are just as many for whom the reverse is in effect - and one need only look at the world today, or indeed any moment of recorded history, for it to be clear that xenophobia is hardly peculiar to hunter-gatherers. Violence and intolerance towards outsiders tend to be driven by internal socioeconomic forces and taboos, not by any natural antipathy of supposed "monocultural" peoples towards outsiders.


A species on a single world that is there long enough is probably going to end up with a monoculture. We haven't really had global communication long enough for it to happen, but I fully expect to there to be a single Earth government at some point in the future. Even if you take into account ancient cultures prior to global mass communication they still adopted cultural aspects from each other, so the idea that eventually an entire sapient species shares the same culture isn't necessarily bad.

While I agree with you in general, a "monoculture" is unlikely to happen simply for reasons of scale. Subcultures are everywhere, and at a global scale, it's difficult to see why they shouldn't just be referred to as "cultures." Culture may cease to be a matter of ethnic identity or geography in the far future, but that doesn't actually imply homogenization - just that the ways we differentiate will change.

[MrZJunior]

It was introduced in the interface period for the specific purpose of identifying which shell bursts belonged to which ship, greatly aiding fire correction. By WWII the technique was largely obsolete due to the advent of fire control radar, but was still in limited use.

What is the interface period?


On land there would be much less benefit, because the land isn't a featureless plane, interfering with direct observation but also providing reference landmarks.

Wouldn't it be easier to adjust the aim of multiple guns firing at the same target if their shells are colored?

[Gnoman]

What is the interface period?



That was supposed to be interwar period. I initially typed that on my phone - note that it has been edited.



Wouldn't it be easier to adjust the aim of multiple guns firing at the same target if their shells are colored?

No. In naval combat you would generally either have direct line of sight to the target, or have a dedicated spotter plane telling you where your shells are landing. On land, if the artillery can see where their shells are landing, something has gone very, very wrong; and nobody's going to assign a dedicated spotter to each gun. On land, they'd either have one gun fire until it found the range and then open up with the entire battery, or have the area pre-registered (typically by laying down a grid on the map with all identifiable landmarks noted, and issuing that map to spotters and the battery commander. You get a target in square G3, consult the table issued, and fire) as closely as possible so that they just have to be given a target, something that is impossible on the sea because there's no landmarks to reference from.

[MrZJunior]

That was supposed to be interwar period. I initially typed that on my phone - note that it has been edited.

Wow, I feel a bit silly, I should have been able to figure that out.


No. In naval combat you would generally either have direct line of sight to the target, or have a dedicated spotter plane telling you where your shells are landing. On land, if the artillery can see where their shells are landing, something has gone very, very wrong; and nobody's going to assign a dedicated spotter to each gun. On land, they'd either have one gun fire until it found the range and then open up with the entire battery, or have the area pre-registered (typically by laying down a grid on the map with all identifiable landmarks noted, and issuing that map to spotters and the battery commander. You get a target in square G3, consult the table issued, and fire) as closely as possible so that they just have to be given a target, something that is impossible on the sea because there's no landmarks to reference from.

Weren't there a lot of guns in the 19th century and earlier that were designed to fire over open sights at their target? Even in the early months of WWI there were some engagements that took place at such close range that field guns were firing directly at enemy troops.

[snowblizz]

Weren't there a lot of guns in the 19th century and earlier that were designed to fire over open sights at their target?
Yes, but it's a differnet premise.


Even in the early months of WWI there were some engagements that took place at such close range that field guns were firing directly at enemy troops.
Yes, and the result of that is partly the "something that went very very wrong" Gnoman mentioned. Almost immediately afterwards cnnon was not use in preference of howitzers. Thoguh this problem was recognized from somewhere in the 1870s and forward. IIRC during the Franco-Prussian war already one side's rifles had similar (accurate) ranges as the other's cannon, to the detriment of the latter.
I'm not sure on the technicality of it (ranges, curvature of earth and whatnots), but basically there's a point where cannon cannot outrange rifles anymore and the artillerymen just get shot dead.

[Vinyadan]

According to wikipedia: For an observer on the ground with eye level at h = 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m), the horizon is at a distance of 2.9 miles (4.7 km). For an observer standing on a hill or tower 100 feet (30 m) in height, the horizon is at a distance of 12.2 miles (19.6 km).

[rrgg]

Yes, and the result of that is partly the "something that went very very wrong" Gnoman mentioned. Almost immediately afterwards cnnon was not use in preference of howitzers. Thoguh this problem was recognized from somewhere in the 1870s and forward. IIRC during the Franco-Prussian war already one side's rifles had similar (accurate) ranges as the other's cannon, to the detriment of the latter.
I'm not sure on the technicality of it (ranges, curvature of earth and whatnots), but basically there's a point where cannon cannot outrange rifles anymore and the artillerymen just get shot dead.

That's when you redesign the gun to include a mantlet.

[Gnoman]

Putting enough armor on a gun to protect the crew and enough ammunition to fight with has been done. It's called a "tank" or a "bunker". Other than that, any mantlet you build on to a gun is going to cease to matter once you've fired three or four rounds, because at that point somebody's going to have to go outside the protection to get more ammo and get shot for his trouble. That's one of the big reasons that tanks liked having infantry around in WWII - they could go pick off the crews of those pesky antitank guns (one of the things Fury got horribly wrong).

[Max_Killjoy]

Putting enough armor on a gun to protect the crew and enough ammunition to fight with has been done. It's called a "tank" or a "bunker". Other than that, any mantlet you build on to a gun is going to cease to matter once you've fired three or four rounds, because at that point somebody's going to have to go outside the protection to get more ammo and get shot for his trouble. That's one of the big reasons that tanks liked having infantry around in WWII - they could go pick off the crews of those pesky antitank guns (one of the things Fury got horribly wrong).

With many of the towed AT guns of that era, a tank's best bet is to fire HE at the wheels, the ground under the gun, or whatever, and wound/scatter the AT crew -- that mantlet's not that much protection against anything that doesn't directly hit it.

[Gnoman]

Trouble was that the things were incredibly easy to conceal. Having infantry probing along to help look for them (particularly since infantry's field of view isn't being blocked by being in a tank) was literally a lifesaver.

[MrZJunior]

In the Franco Prussian War it was the French rifle that outranged their own field artillery under certain circumstances.

They probably had heavier guns with more range for fortresses or sieges but I've never heard much about them.

[fusilier]

In the Franco Prussian War it was the French rifle that outranged their own field artillery under certain circumstances.

They probably had heavier guns with more range for fortresses or sieges but I've never heard much about them.

Direct fire by field artillery was still expected in the Franco-Prussian War. I know the French had rifled cannon (although older smoothbores may have been pressed into service, I *think* most had been rifled at that point). However they had few breechloading rifled cannons like the Prussians. Nevertheless the infantry's Chassepot rifle was considered to have very good range, and the Mitralleuse (a kind of machine gun) was actually an attempt to replace canister shot as the rifled cannon couldn't use canister effectively.

As late as the start of WW1 field artillery was expected to fight line of sight. That seems to have been the original reason for shields on cannon like the French 75mm, to protect the crews from rifle fire at range. Howitzers, and other cannon intended for indirect (or maybe parapet firing), often didn't have shields in the first decade of the 20th century. I have seen it claimed that they were added to protect the crews from their own shells exploding shortly after exiting the muzzle. I haven't seen that confirmed though, it could have been to protect them from shrapnel from counter battery fire.

There's a story recorded in Un anno sull'altipiano, set in the mountains of Italy in WW1, of a bizarre use of artillery. The general commanding the division insisted on attacking without having received proper artillery support. He tried using bangalore torpedoes in a night offensive, equipping sappers with armor and sending them out in front of the main infantry (in broad daylight), etc. At one point he managed to obtain a single 75mm Deport cannon. The Deport was an odd design but it had a split trail, which allowed a large amount of traverse and elevation. He placed this single cannon in the front line, and had it fire up and down the enemy line at isolated strong points, while the infantry waited to attack. The Austrians had a sniper who started firing at the aiming slit in the cannon's shield. As the cannon itself wasn't moving the sniper was able to adjust his aim until he could fire through the slit, wounding an artilleryman. Immediately another artilleryman stepped up to take over the position, he was also wounded, and another artilleryman stepped up. I forget how long this went on for before they ordered them to stop firing. The author was amazed by the professionalism of the artilleryman(and also the stupidity of the general).

[Storm_Of_Snow]

With many of the towed AT guns of that era, a tank's best bet is to fire HE at the wheels, the ground under the gun, or whatever, and wound/scatter the AT crew -- that mantlet's not that much protection against anything that doesn't directly hit it.
The mantlet's basically for protection against shrapnel and small arms. That you can hang stuff off it to help conceal the gun is an added bonus. :smallwink:

As for counter-battery fire from a tank, an HE round will mess up the crew's day so long as it hits somewhere roughly near by - and the machine guns will do as good a job if the tank's close enough.

[Vinyadan]

I guess this explains why in the Italian memory of WWI Italian generals share the role of the enemy with the Austrians.

[snowblizz]

I guess this explains why in the Italian memory of WWI Italian generals share the role of the enemy with the Austrians.

There is *plenty* of more reasons. Italian generals probably caused more unnecessary deaths then the enemy :P. At least the enemy was the suppsoed enemy.
Watching the Great War youtube channel (following the WW1 week by week) and generals idiocy was widespread but the Italian's bosses are almost on a level of their own.

[fusilier]

There is *plenty* of more reasons. Italian generals probably caused more unnecessary deaths then the enemy :P. At least the enemy was the suppsoed enemy.
Watching the Great War youtube channel (following the WW1 week by week) and generals idiocy was widespread but the Italian's bosses are almost on a level of their own.

I'm not sure if that's entirely fair -- this general was particularly bad and in the book he's replaced with a more . . . let's say . . . conventional general. I think it should also be kept in mind that this was World War 1; within that context I don't think they come off looking too bad. The Italians faced probably the worst terrain of the war, and the 1866 border with Austria had been specifically designed with Austrian defense in mind. They also lacked the industry and therefore the equipment needed (a situation that only gradually improved). This particular incident took place on the, more, mountainous northern front, which was usually a sideshow to the Isonzo front, and therefore didn't get priority for things like artillery. Although there were some amazing actions on that front too.

Italians didn't develop the large scale "infiltration tactics" that the Germans employed, and their defenses were woefully unprepared for the Caporetto offensive, but that could be said of any of the Western Allies at the time. They learned from Caporetto and had a much better defensive scheme in place for the Battle of the Solstice the next year. At the tactical level, the Arditi were developed and employed effectively as assault troops.

That said there are some things about the Italian leadership, especially under Cadorna, that were particularly terrible. I'm thinking primarily of the random executions. He also didn't really consider other strategic options, preferring to batter his way through the Isonzo front.

As with most of history, a detailed understanding paints a much more complicated picture, and Italian military history must usually be approached with skepticism due to the still prevalent tendency of foreign (and even domestic) writers to be very dismissive of the Italian military, with few works that actually try to evaluate the sources, rather than relying upon, old, outdated, biased (sometimes bordering on racist) works. After the war the Allies, and especially the British*, wanted to reneg on the promises they made to Italy, and made various claims about how useless they were during the war -- this was easy, because those preconceptions already existed. If you want to read a counterpoint, see if you can find a book called Italy's Part In Winning The World War -- it was written in the 1930s by an American officer who served on the Italian front. He was shocked by the manner in which Italy's former allies tried to discredit their military, with claims that went directly against his experience. That work may be a bit biased in the opposite direction, but it's a rare work indeed.

The White War is a more recent work that's worth reading. Schindler's Isonzo on the other hand, which was recommended highly to me, is so biased I wanted to through it on the fire, which I avoided doing as it was a rather expensive book borrowed from the library. It's not surprising as the author's sources were almost entirely early Austrian histories about the war, which have a particular narrative that they are trying to support. There is, however, enough detail in the work, that the details often don't support the conclusions he comes to. This work is particularly troublesome, because it seems to be regarded as an authority -- things like, strangely lopsided, casualty numbers appear to come from his work. Frustratingly, he admits to making up the numbers, but never explains how he came to the numbers he reported.

A very good primer for the Italian Front is a rather old website:
http://www.worldwar1.com/itafront/

It's presented as a collection of articles -- but if you pick through them in the right order you can get a pretty good overview of the Italian front at least through Caporetto.

*Perhaps ironically, most British soldiers had a poor opinion of their generals as well.

[snowblizz]

I'm not sure if that's entirely fair --

That said there are some things about the Italian leadership, especially under Cadorna, that were particularly terrible. I'm thinking primarily of the random executions. He also didn't really consider other strategic options, preferring to batter his way through the Isonzo front.

Principally Cadorna I'm thinking of. Though few of the main generals seem to have been very good. Only the Austrian guy (who'se name somehow won't pop up) who kicked off the whole war probably did more more to ruin his country and it's efforts.

Things such as not giving the troops any leave because they'd be spreading "defeatism", constant disastrous attacks. Not following through the one time they had a chance to break through, or they did but stopped short of strategic points any fool could not plainly see.

Has nothing to do with military capabilites as such, the man was a disaster for his troops pure and simple. I don't doubt for a second Italian troops felt more symphaty for their enemies than their commanders. This was fairly common all around really as the failings in high command are numerous and on all sides.

[Vinyadan]

Cadorna also had some very unusual idea of how to motivate his troops. When they told him they couldn't get over the barbed wire defending an Austrian position, he answered that they would cross it on mattresses made of corpses (theirs).

Another cause of resentment was the fact that Italy has never been attacked since it was unified. So it was clear that the soldiers were there because someone had freely chosen for them to be there, not because a war had been forced on their country.

And the third thing I can think of right now is that Italy did not send any food or goods to its POWs, and instead described them as traitors to their families. There are letters of fathers of soldiers writing to them and calling them betrayers and telling them to shoot themselves, after they had asked to send them food.

Put all of this together, and you get a pretty dark portrayal of the ruling class.

[fusilier]

Not following through the one time they had a chance to break through, or they did but stopped short of strategic points any fool could not plainly see.

If this is referring to Cadorna (and I believe you are here), I think this came from Schindler's Isonzo -- specifically the not following through when they had a chance. He makes some pretty extreme claims about the Battle of Gorizia (6th Isonzo) and I could go into some detail about this, but basically he claimed that the Austro-Hungarians were near collapse and all the Italians had to do was order their troops forward and they would have had complete victory. He then goes on to say that their pontoon bridges had been lost during the advance and they couldn't cross the river. Which seems to say that they couldn't have advanced if they wanted to?

I think a lot of this has to do with perspectives. From the Austro-Hungarian point of view they were dangerously close to breaking. But what they didn't know is that the Italians had become strung out during their advance, and with most of the bridges blown, couldn't bring up their artillery quickly enough to support a continued advance.

On more than one occasion the Austro-Hungarian army seemed to be on the breaking point, but the Italians had used up their ammunition and reserves, and had to call off the offensive. They just didn't have the logistical capability of the Western Allies to maintain offensives as long.

[fusilier]

Cadorna also had some very unusual idea of how to motivate his troops. When they told him they couldn't get over the barbed wire defending an Austrian position, he answered that they would cross it on mattresses made of corpses (theirs).
. . .

Put all of this together, and you get a pretty dark portrayal of the ruling class.

Yeah,

Cadorna was fond of "decimations" -- he had pretty extreme ideas about "iron discipline", and would basically institute random executions if a unit ever "misbehaved". These were expected to be carried out immediately, with no sense of justice or process. Subordinate officers who didn't go along with his ideas were usually removed in one manner or another.


And the third thing I can think of right now is that Italy did not send any food or goods to its POWs, and instead described them as traitors to their families. There are letters of fathers of soldiers writing to them and calling them betrayers and telling them to shoot themselves, after they had asked to send them food.

After Cadorna was kicked out they did put together a plan to send some relief to the POWs through the Red Cross, but this was enacted slowly, and deliveries only began just as the war ended. :-/ Even when the POWs were being returned they weren't prepared for them, and kept them cooped up on trains until they could be cleared (I can't remember if it was for disease, political leanings, or both).


Another cause of resentment was the fact that Italy has never been attacked since it was unified. So it was clear that the soldiers were there because someone had freely chosen for them to be there, not because a war had been forced on their country.

Yeah, there was some anti-hapsburg feelings in the North, and certainly the irrendentists supported fighting Austria. But most of the population saw war as a kind of natural disaster -- something to be avoided if possible. Given all those conditions it's sometimes surprising how well the Italian soldier did. They never suffered mutinies like the French Army, although they were probably close to it after the 11th Battle of the Isonzo. Some historians claim that Italians rallied to the cause after the Caporetto disaster, with the Austrians now on Italian land, and with the replacement of the high command, better treatment and pay were introduced.

[Deadmeat.GW]

Same in North Africa, the Italian troops were well respected by Rommel, the officers, especially the high command not so much so...

The Ariete did massively well for example.

Some people remember the quote from Rommel that they had been decimated and lost 100 tanks and it is always taken out of context.

This was part of a request for reinforcements and the Italian high command would only replace losses at one point when they really needed extra troops to push through so Rommel exaggerated in the hope that he would get what he needed to break through and it incidentally showed that he had quite some confidence in the Italian troops since he tried to get more of them too.

Taking his quote out of the conversational and political/military context made it pretty different.

The Italian artillery corps also was extremely professional and would fight on way beyond what most people would expect from artillery units.

[Lemmy]

Would a buckler be helpful when strapped to the forearm of someone fighting with sword and dagger? I'm under impression a buckler is much too small to really help if it's strapped to someone's arm rather than held center-grip.

[eru001]

Same in North Africa, the Italian troops were well respected by Rommel, the officers, especially the high command not so much so...

The Ariete did massively well for example.

Some people remember the quote from Rommel that they had been decimated and lost 100 tanks and it is always taken out of context.

This was part of a request for reinforcements and the Italian high command would only replace losses at one point when they really needed extra troops to push through so Rommel exaggerated in the hope that he would get what he needed to break through and it incidentally showed that he had quite some confidence in the Italian troops since he tried to get more of them too.

Taking his quote out of the conversational and political/military context made it pretty different.

The Italian artillery corps also was extremely professional and would fight on way beyond what most people would expect from artillery units.

Rommel once said "The German Soldier impressed the world, the Italian Bersergliari impressed the German Soldier."

[Vinyadan]

Would a buckler be helpful when strapped to the forearm of someone fighting with sword and dagger? I'm under impression a buckler is much too small to really help if it's strapped to someone's arm rather than held center-grip.

I somehow read rapier instead of buckler. I guess it would offer you some small protection, but you would lose a few techniques. More importantly, I don't think it's possible to concentrate at the same time on dagger and buckler, if they depend on the same arm. You would probably just forget about it.

[GraaEminense]

I think it would make more sense to add a dagger if you were already fighting with a buckler than the other way around, if you see what I mean.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y59/mactom/DirkTargeinhand.jpg

[Lemmy]

I somehow read rapier instead of buckler.Well... That's... Uh... Totally your fault. I certainly didn't make a mistake when typing and then edited my post to fix my typo. No sir... Not at all... *whistles inconspicuously*

:smallbiggrin:


I guess it would offer you some small protection, but you would lose a few techniques. More importantly, I don't think it's possible to concentrate at the same time on dagger and buckler, if they depend on the same arm. You would probably just forget about it.I see. Thanks for the clarification. I ask because I've seen images of people with bucklers strapped to their forearm rather than held center-grip, and a couple of them had characters dual-wielding daggers/shortswords... In fact, IIRC, bucklers are used strapped to the forearm in D&D/PF, which doesn't seem very useful to me. From my layman's PoV, it seems a buckler wouldn't be much good without the mobility of a center-grip.

[Vinyadan]

A possible alternative: someone hinted it could be a Hungarian shield-spike thing, but it could be a duelling weapon
http://s16.postimg.org/z8wkwgxx1/113.jpg
From here: http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/Gladiatoria/Gladiatoria.htm#.WBI9zyS6-Uk (page 6, where there also is a spiked buckler)

[Vinyadan]

I found a better image.

http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Page:MS_Germ.Quart.16_55r.jpg

The text says:

Hie nach ist ain stand mit dem messer vnd auch mit dem vngrischen schilt dar aus man alle stuck mag treiben zu schimph vnd zu ernst –

"Hereafter is a stand with the knife and also with the Hungarian shield, from which it is good to use all parts for game (tournament) and for real combat."
Translation mine, given without warrant but good intention ;-)

[fusilier]

Rommel once said "The German Soldier impressed the world, the Italian Bersergliari impressed the German Soldier."

I heard a story from someone who's grandfather was a junior Italian officer on the Eastern Front in WW2, he remembered a German officer saying: "German officers, and Italian soldiers" -- implying that was the best combination.

Even in WW2 the Italian officer corps still had those aristocratic airs, that often impeded good cooperation between the officers and the men (language differences didn't help either). Even in peacetime there were insufficient funds for training (for both officers and men), so while the written regulations were good, they often failed to live up to them. Italian officers who got to observe German units in training, and witness the cooperation first hand, went away not just impressed but envious.

[eru001]

I heard a story from someone who's grandfather was a junior Italian officer on the Eastern Front in WW2, he remembered a German officer saying: "German officers, and Italian soldiers" -- implying that was the best combination.

Even in WW2 the Italian officer corps still had those aristocratic airs, that often impeded good cooperation between the officers and the men (language differences didn't help either). Even in peacetime there were insufficient funds for training (for both officers and men), so while the written regulations were good, they often failed to live up to them. Italian officers who got to observe German units in training, and witness the cooperation first hand, went away not just impressed but envious.

It is worth noting that the quote refers to Bersergliari (the Italian elite infantry) not the italian regulars. The regular troops of the italian army were a mixed bag, some units as skilled and professional as you could expect of any army and some units just barely more usefull than an equivalent number of cardboard cutouts.

Bersergliari on the other hand were the best troops in the italian army, trained in small group assault tactics as well as regular warfare, with an emphasis on aggression and mobility in the field. On top of that, they were gutsy and would willingly charge into the worst areas of the battlefield regardless of the odds against them, often managing to defy those odds. A lot of their victories read like something out of a not particularly believable hollywood movie.

[rrgg]

Would a buckler be helpful when strapped to the forearm of someone fighting with sword and dagger? I'm under impression a buckler is much too small to really help if it's strapped to someone's arm rather than held center-grip.

George Silver gave both sword and buckler as well as sword and target (the shield strapped to the arm) the advantage over sword and dagger, although he didn't say anything about holding both a dagger and a target in the off hand. When dueling with a target generally don't hold it flat towards the enemy, rather even with a round target one edge is held forward with the arm almost fully extended much like the pictures Vinyadan linked. This helps quite a bit with the defense.

Holding a dagger in the shield hand might provide some advantage in that it gives you more options. But unless you've had a ton of practice with it and have learned techniques to actually use the dagger effectively it might not help much.

[fusilier]

It is worth noting that the quote refers to Bersergliari (the Italian elite infantry) not the italian regulars. The regular troops of the italian army were a mixed bag, some units as skilled and professional as you could expect of any army and some units just barely more usefull than an equivalent number of cardboard cutouts.

Bersergliari on the other hand were the best troops in the italian army, trained in small group assault tactics as well as regular warfare, with an emphasis on aggression and mobility in the field. On top of that, they were gutsy and would willingly charge into the worst areas of the battlefield regardless of the odds against them, often managing to defy those odds. A lot of their victories read like something out of a not particularly believable hollywood movie.

The context of the quote of the officer on the Eastern Front was more general. Bersaglieri were elite infantry, whether or not they were the best in the Italian Army is probably debated by Alpini. ;-) But perhaps more importantly, the elite units received the best stuff. They were relatively well equipped with trucks and motorcycles, and got more sub-machineguns, etc., not to mention better and more complete training.

In theory, if the rest of the Italian army could have been as well equipped and trained, they probably would have done a lot better. In fact there are studies that claim when the Italian army was smaller it was more effective -- but Mussolini was always trying to make it bigger than the country could really support. The result was the army ended up spreading its resources too thin, bringing down the quality of the whole force (barring the elite units that got special attention). That attitude -- put as many people as possible in uniform -- was probably fine during WW1, but by WW2 the infantry needed to be supported by armor and trucks, and trained how to coordinate with them. As an example, the number of trucks in the Italian army was woefully inadequate when the war began and it only dropped as the war progressed, as their industry couldn't even make up for losses.

[Storm Bringer]

I'll just leave this here.




The Italian command was, for the most part, not equal to the task of carrying on war in the desert, where the requirement was lightning decision followed by immediate action. The training of the Italian infantryman fell far short of the standard required by modern warfare. … Particularly harmful was the all pervading differentiation between officer and man. While the men had to make shift without field-kitchens, the officers, or many of them, refused adamantly to forgo their several course meals. Many officers, again, considered it unnecessary to put in an appearance during battle and thus set the men an example. All in all, therefore, it was small wonder that the Italian soldier, who incidentally was extraordinarily modest in his needs, developed a feeling of inferiority which accounted for his occasional failure and moments of crisis. There was no foreseeable hope of a change for the better in any of these matters, although many of the bigger men among the Italian officers were making sincere efforts in that direction.


all i will add to this is that i have read a article on the Argentinian army in the Falklands that pretty much says exactly the same things (willing troops being led badly by distant officers)

[Kiero]

Would a buckler be helpful when strapped to the forearm of someone fighting with sword and dagger? I'm under impression a buckler is much too small to really help if it's strapped to someone's arm rather than held center-grip.

That's a Scottish Highland fighting style.

[Vinyadan]

I think I've found another example, although it's a bit different from that you asked about (the buckler isn't strapped to the arm, it is instead held like a buckler by hand, while holding a dagger with the same hand). It's recommended against two enemies at once. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Ms.Thott.290.2%C2%BA_119r.jpg

Something similar from another manuscript:
http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0002/bsb00020451/images/index.html?id=00020451&seite=244


About the Ariete in North Africa, there is a phrase from Mario Tobino I find very interesting. Tobino is a well known poet and narrative author who worked as a physician and psychiatrist, and was sent to Libya during WWII as a field doctor. He observed that, when the Ariete disembarked, the common soldiers had the feeling that they had been sent there to humiliate them, because, unlike them, they were well trained and heavily armed. So I guess that's the feeling of inferiority Rommel spoke of.
The book was translated in English here: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Legions-Italian-Deserts-Sergeant/dp/B000H3WPCQ

In the same book he described a case in which women from a harem wanted him to visit them. They weren't ill though, and he ended up realizing they just wanted to show themselves naked to someone else than their (future) husband. So he made the visit, while the house leader stood in same room with his back turned at them, invented some light illness and prescribed some useless remedies. I don't know why, but this reminds me of our age of selfies.

[MrZJunior]

Would plate armor be at all useful at close range against a pistol chambered for .25 ACP?

If not, would people who are two or three times stronger than normal be able to wear armor thick enough?

[rrgg]

Probably, according to wikipedia a .25 ACP round has an energy of only 127J, which is even less than some really powerful arrows or crossbow bolts might achieve. I suppose if there was steel-jacketed version it might penetrate relatively thin armor, although even then the stopping power probably wouldn't be that great.

[PersonMan]

So, I've got a scenario in my head that's prompting another of my what-ifs.

Modern empire is collapsing into civil war after about a decade of expensive (in money and casualties) external warfare. Nearby countries are giving some support to the factions they like, but it's very limited in scope. No large-scale imports of fuel, weapons, ammunition, etc. are happening.

What is the war going to look like? Will you see rationed use of things like air power and armored units to try and extend their lifetime* or will they be used as much as possible to try and gain a decisive advantage early on?

As the war continues, what sort of effect will the lack of air power, heavier artillery, and armored units have? I'm assuming that, during the fighting, major industrial centers will likely be severely damaged or destroyed by fighting for them or destroyed intentionally by a retreating force, so over time you'll see a degradation of equipment used.


* The country can manufacture all the weapons it uses, but in many cases is reliant on material and fuel imports to actually keep making or using them.

[MrZJunior]

So, I've got a scenario in my head that's prompting another of my what-ifs.

Modern empire is collapsing into civil war after about a decade of expensive (in money and casualties) external warfare. Nearby countries are giving some support to the factions they like, but it's very limited in scope. No large-scale imports of fuel, weapons, ammunition, etc. are happening.

What is the war going to look like? Will you see rationed use of things like air power and armored units to try and extend their lifetime* or will they be used as much as possible to try and gain a decisive advantage early on?

As the war continues, what sort of effect will the lack of air power, heavier artillery, and armored units have? I'm assuming that, during the fighting, major industrial centers will likely be severely damaged or destroyed by fighting for them or destroyed intentionally by a retreating force, so over time you'll see a degradation of equipment used.


* The country can manufacture all the weapons it uses, but in many cases is reliant on material and fuel imports to actually keep making or using them.

If they have a large agricultural sector they could use ethanol to sub in for some imported petroleum. You'd start seeing a lot of make do and scrounged together equipment like technicals and stuff like that. I expect that over time civilian vehicles would start replacing military vehicles because there would be more spare parts and mechanics available for them.

[Gnoman]

So, I've got a scenario in my head that's prompting another of my what-ifs.

Modern empire is collapsing into civil war after about a decade of expensive (in money and casualties) external warfare. Nearby countries are giving some support to the factions they like, but it's very limited in scope. No large-scale imports of fuel, weapons, ammunition, etc. are happening.

What is the war going to look like? Will you see rationed use of things like air power and armored units to try and extend their lifetime* or will they be used as much as possible to try and gain a decisive advantage early on?

As the war continues, what sort of effect will the lack of air power, heavier artillery, and armored units have? I'm assuming that, during the fighting, major industrial centers will likely be severely damaged or destroyed by fighting for them or destroyed intentionally by a retreating force, so over time you'll see a degradation of equipment used.


* The country can manufacture all the weapons it uses, but in many cases is reliant on material and fuel imports to actually keep making or using them.

Cartridge cases are relatively easy to make even with limited tools, but are easily reused. Smokeless powder and primers do not require any exotic materials or manufacturing methods, and bullets can be simply cast. The only moderaetly tricky aspect of ammunition manufacture is jacketing the rounds, which at worst would cause a reversion to simple lead projectiles and the acceptance of fouling risk, possibly reviving experiments with Williams-style cleaning" (The Williams round was basically a standard Minee bullet that had zinc washers attatched that were intended to scour the grooves of the gun's rifling, removing lead and black powder deposits. The round didn't work very well, and was obsoleted by the advent of smokeless powder and jacketed rounds, but the concept isn't fundamentally bad) bullets.

Likewise, you can produce a fully functional assault rifle, submachine gun, or machine gun with extremely basic machine tools, in a cave, with a box of scraps.

Functionally, small arms and ammunition will be unlimited in quantity, although a decrease in quality will be expected over time.

Artillery is a mixed bag. Conventional tube artillery will have trouble with spare parts - especially spare barrels. The barrel of a large cannon requires serious infrastructure to produce, and they last only a few thousand rounds at best - some guns, like the famous British 17-pounder AT gun, had expected lifetimes of under 100 rounds. Beyond that, the gun can still be used, but accuracy will become very poor. On the upside, standard HE rounds can be built with extreme ease (although after awhile they'll have to replace the radar or laser proximity fuse with a timed or contact version, drastically reducing effect), cannister rounds are trivial to make and all-steel anti-armor rounds aren't too hard. Fancier rounds such as APFSDS or APCR would be harder, and precision-guided rounds would be right out.

Conversely, unguided rocket artillery would be available in unlimited quantites. All that is needed for a rocket launcher is tin-snips and sheet metal, and the rocket itself isn't much harder. they'd have to be fired in vast numbers to have great effect - so you fire them in extremely vast numbers.

Mortars are almost as simple as rockets.

Most light vehicles will be used for logistic purposes - hauling bullets and beans is the most important role in a conflict. Some will be used as ambulances instead, and a few will be used for spotting and personal vehicles for officers (not a case of rank having privilege, but serving the absolutely important strategic goal of coordinating activity.) Motorcycles in particular will be pressed into service as couriers and messengers. For vehicles of this sort, spare parts won't be too much of a problem, as an extremely simple engine that requires basic tools to manufacture will suffice. In many cases, the engines will be ripped out in favor of a simpler, easier to maintain model, probably adapted to burn ethanol instead of gasoline. As time goes on, these will find themselves pressed into service as active combat units by conversion into "technicals".

Heavier vehicles will be held in reserve for major engagements, because they use huge amounts of fuel and spare parts in any action, and modern versions require a lot of specialized equipment to make the parts - you can't make the computer for a laser rangefinder without a microprocessor shop no matter what you know, for example. All factors related to artillery apply here.

Aircraft won't be held in reserve. Even at rest their maintenance requirements are too high, so you'll lose them even if you don't use them. Better to use them at peak effectiveness.

In the case of heavy vehicles and aircraft, don't discount the possibility that older types might be reintroduced. An M4 Sherman is no match for a M1 Abrams or an M60 Patton, but if you have to choose between a bad tank (by modern standards) and no tank, bad tank wins every time. Likewise, if you can't get F-16s, building an F-86 Sabre (picking an early jet instead of a late prop-job because the latter can use the much easier to get kerosene for fuel instead of high-octane gasoline, which was one of the reasons the Germans were transitioning aggressively to the Me-262) might be a worthwhile compromise. Something that uses only 1940s technology will be far, far easier to build and maintain with even a degraded modern industrial base. You'll still have the problem of fuel, but it would become a matter of carefully husbanding stocks for decisive need rather than one of "well, I'm out".

The exact nature of the conflict will depend greatly on geographical details - WWI trench lines were as much due to the cramped nature of Central Europe (which allowed both sides to fully fill the front lines with troops and a defense in depth) as it was the outdated tactical thinking of the two sides. Conversely, the freewheeling spectacle of the American Civil War, where troops moved around for advantage and spent almost all their time out of contact except for brisk, bloody battles lasting days at the most, had more to do with the enormous amount of space available than it did any tactical genius on the part of Grant and Lee. A few general principles will probably hold true.

Tactically, a war of maneuver will be much, much harder. Not only will your mobile striking forces deteriorate rapidly, but you will quickly lose the ability to keep supplies flowing to the front lines. The real reason that WWI front lines rarely went anywhere even in a breakthrough was that the men rapidly ran out of supplies because the logistics couldn't keep up. When the two sides collide, it is going to be a straight slugging match. Flanking and similar will be possible, but at infantry speeds in the face of machine-gun fire, it is going to be hard.

Strategically, maneuver is potentially possible, and all strategic effort will be to capture, not destroy, manufacturing and resource processing nodes. Forces defending them might blow them up before retreating, but the attackers would make every effort to avoid this. If the two sides work out a localized equivalent of the Geneva and Hague conventions (even if only informally and unofficially) avoiding the destruction of such facilities might well be an article.

[MrZJunior]

Civilian aircraft can be adapted to a ground attack role. The Tamil Tigers had an air force consisting of recreational planes that they used with some success against government forces. I haven't found much information about what weapons they used, but reports refer vaguely to rockets and bombs. As the use of barrel bombs has shown in recent conflicts you don't necessarily need to be accurate with sorts of weapons.

[Straybow]

Bricks are not designed to withstand sharp focused impacts, nor is the mortar used to put them together all that effective against such forces. A single blow from an ordinary hammer will shatter a brick, while the sort of stones that quickly proved wholly inadequate against cannon fire are more likely to break the hammer. Sun-dried brick has very different properties from kiln-fired brick. It is almost ductile. While Malbork and some other northern European forts were made of brick they weren't expected to stand against a siege. They are for defense against musket and light guns, or count on their own heavy guns to outrange the portable guns an enemy might bring to bear.

[Carl]

An M4 Sherman is no match for a M1 Abrams or an M60 Patton, but if you have to choose between a bad tank (by modern standards) and no tank, bad tank wins every time.

To wit on this, the conflict in Ukraine has seen Ukraine reactivate at least some of it's stocks of obsolete vehicles, including SU-100's and T34-85's. Both tanks that first fought during WW2.

Also basic Shaped charges are rather easy to make as well. And we can do printed circuit boards these days which makes mass manufacture of basic electronics much easier than say in WW2.

Two big question marks stick out for me though.

1. WHat happened to whoever they where fighting.

2. If they're embargo'd how are they gettign the kind of supplies of raw materials like coal and iron (at a bare minimum), to manufacture things, keep power stations running, e.t.c.

[MrZJunior]

2. If they're embargo'd how are they gettign the kind of supplies of raw materials like coal and iron (at a bare minimum), to manufacture things, keep power stations running, e.t.c.

I read the initial question as implying that the nation is large enough that a lot of that stuff is produced internally. They say "modern empire" and imply that it managed to fight some very large wars.

[Carl]

I read the initial question as implying that the nation is large enough that a lot of that stuff is produced internally. They say "modern empire" and imply that it managed to fight some very large wars.

Unless they very large, (in which case they likely have their own source of oil), there's simply no way they'll have sources of raw materials for everything they'll need. And that assuming that they can get the required quantities from the internal sources. It's been a basic fact since the industrial revolution, you want an industrialised society and you will have to import at least some raw materials of some description from somwhere. Some countries are big enough to support a certain minimal level of industrialisation on internal resources alone, but nothing like a full industrialization, let alone an actual war economy.

[Vinyadan]

The closest thing I can think of is the Russian Civil war. Empire? Check. Costly wars abroad? Check. Other forces getting involved but not so much? Check.

So I'd expect something terrifying. I can imagine a huge civil war burning out through the industrial capabilities of the country, turning into an infantry deal on a massive scale, with most of the war being fought against civilians. Sarin gas being thrown around like confetti to keep people in line. Takeovers of the central government by different factions within the recognized government faction. Breakaway regions starting their own civil wars. Creation of areas of ungovernable instability that become a menace for international security. Mass starvation, a war fought more through supplies than through armour.

The one whose industrial base keeps functioning while keeping unity within the faction wins the race.

The only good thing is the scarce foreign involvement. The reason why the Syrian war isn't going to end any time soon is that resources that would otherwise be long depleted are being introduced by foreign factions, allowing the war to go on indefinitely as long as there are able-bodied, instead of being limited by materiel constraints.

[Xuc Xac]

Are there any "modern empires" that could have a civil war without one side having all the nation's military resources and the other side being insurgents?

[MrZJunior]

Unless they very large, (in which case they likely have their own source of oil), there's simply no way they'll have sources of raw materials for everything they'll need. And that assuming that they can get the required quantities from the internal sources. It's been a basic fact since the industrial revolution, you want an industrialised society and you will have to import at least some raw materials of some description from somwhere. Some countries are big enough to support a certain minimal level of industrialisation on internal resources alone, but nothing like a full industrialization, let alone an actual war economy.

Sure, but the larger a nation the longer they can put that day off, and the easier they will be able produce work arounds. In WWII Germany lacked for a lot of resources, especially as the war went on, but they managed to figure out how to work around a lot of that. Admittedly the work arounds were often dangerous or less useful than the real deal, but it can be done.

[Max_Killjoy]

Are there any "modern empires" that could have a civil war without one side having all the nation's military resources and the other side being insurgents?


Maybe Russia, if whoever comes after Tsar Vladamir isn't as skilled at getting the people to gobble up outrageous BS.

[Carl]

True but remember German controlled most of Europe, and various parts of Africa for much of the war, and saying it hurt them to have to do workarounds is a massive understatement, never mind the safety point. They investigated this (http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time) stuff for example. When a professional chemist will flat out refuse to touch the stuff, you know dangerous just doesn't do it justice. Probably the only stuff nastier than that, that i've heard of, is hydrostatic acid. Luckily no good uses for it. Also this (http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride) stuff. It explodes. At -180c.

To continue with the point of this point instead of the darkly humorous world of insane chemicals Germany as a result had a much larger than country sized area to pull resources in from, built up fair stockpiles before the war AFAIK, and still ran short fast. A more normal sized country locked in a prior life or death war beforehand is basically going to be out of supplies nearly by wars end, nevermind the civil war kicking off.

[Max_Killjoy]

True but remember German controlled most of Europe, and various parts of Africa for much of the war, and saying it hurt them to have to do workarounds is a massive understatement, never mind the safety point. They investigated this (http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time) stuff for example. When a professional chemist will flat out refuse to touch the stuff, you know dangerous just doesn't do it justice. Probably the only stuff nastier than that, that i've heard of, is hydrostatic acid. Luckily no good uses for it. Also this (http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride) stuff. It explodes. At -180c.

To continue with the point of this point instead of the darkly humorous world of insane chemicals Germany as a result had a much larger than country sized area to pull resources in from, built up fair stockpiles before the war AFAIK, and still ran short fast. A more normal sized country locked in a prior life or death war beforehand is basically going to be out of supplies nearly by wars end, nevermind the civil war kicking off.

Which makes me think of this:

“There’s no material safety data sheet for astatine. If there were, it would just be the word “NO” scrawled over and over in charred blood.”― Randall Munroe

[PersonMan]

The exact nature of the conflict will depend greatly on geographical details - WWI trench lines were as much due to the cramped nature of Central Europe (which allowed both sides to fully fill the front lines with troops and a defense in depth) as it was the outdated tactical thinking of the two sides. Conversely, the freewheeling spectacle of the American Civil War, where troops moved around for advantage and spent almost all their time out of contact except for brisk, bloody battles lasting days at the most, had more to do with the enormous amount of space available than it did any tactical genius on the part of Grant and Lee. A few general principles will probably hold true.

Tactically, a war of maneuver will be much, much harder. Not only will your mobile striking forces deteriorate rapidly, but you will quickly lose the ability to keep supplies flowing to the front lines. The real reason that WWI front lines rarely went anywhere even in a breakthrough was that the men rapidly ran out of supplies because the logistics couldn't keep up. When the two sides collide, it is going to be a straight slugging match. Flanking and similar will be possible, but at infantry speeds in the face of machine-gun fire, it is going to be hard.

Strategically, maneuver is potentially possible, and all strategic effort will be to capture, not destroy, manufacturing and resource processing nodes. Forces defending them might blow them up before retreating, but the attackers would make every effort to avoid this. If the two sides work out a localized equivalent of the Geneva and Hague conventions (even if only informally and unofficially) avoiding the destruction of such facilities might well be an article.

The area in question would be France - comparing the Western Front of WWI to these fronts, it looks like they could potentially create a thickly-populated front line. The question is also how quickly these groups could increase the size of their forces, to have the men to actually cover a larger area like that.

I'm surprised that rocket artillery will actually stick around, I'd thought it was one of the things that would disappear early on.

I have ideas for various 'phases' of fighting, as the parties involved realize the scope of things and the unrealistic nature of their hopes for a quick reunification in their favor - after the first phase, a treaty could be signed that prevents a lot of further destruction of industry.


Unless they very large, (in which case they likely have their own source of oil), there's simply no way they'll have sources of raw materials for everything they'll need. And that assuming that they can get the required quantities from the internal sources. It's been a basic fact since the industrial revolution, you want an industrialised society and you will have to import at least some raw materials of some description from somwhere. Some countries are big enough to support a certain minimal level of industrialisation on internal resources alone, but nothing like a full industrialization, let alone an actual war economy.

I'm thinking you'd see a downward spiral - first scraping by with leftover supplies, then scavenging for formerly 'eh, we could but it's not worth the time and money' type sources (scrap, recycling, etc.), then a mix of 'well so much for that' and 'hey this will probably blow you up but it could be useful, try it out'.


Two big question marks stick out for me though.

1. WHat happened to whoever they where fighting.

They were fighting in a war of aggression, which turned into a multi-year grind that seemingly came to an end when a new government came to power in the empire. At that point, the fighting had reached a bunch of heavily-fortified mountains and no one on the other side really wanted to commit to attacking into them when their enemy was already accepting most of their terms.

Internal stability (which was already beginning to fall, allowing the new government to form in the first place) dropped like a stone, though, and before the peace talks were fully over, the government was taken over by a coup, then a counter-coup occurred and internal fighting started in earnest. A hasty peace deal was signed and there are technicalities that were skipped, but for the time being one side is in a civil war (and wants to avoid any external conflicts) and the other nations have zero interest in continuing a costly war.

What is happening is limited involvement in border regions, to ensure that there's an at least mostly-functioning governing body nearby to keep things easier to deal with.


2. If they're embargo'd how are they gettign the kind of supplies of raw materials like coal and iron (at a bare minimum), to manufacture things, keep power stations running, e.t.c.

This is actually something I just didn't think of.

But there's both legit science trust me CoolNewSubstance-powered power plants to lessen that issue and a possible in-world explanation; several nearby nations allowing limited trade with faction(s) they like. Nothing as direct as selling arms, but some things like "here, have these raw materials for building up damaged infrastructure, now pinky promise to not use it for tanks".

There're also hole in the blockade: one nation that is providing support for one faction, but it goes from "shipments of weapons, ammunition, supplies and volunteers" to "actually let me have those back" to "nevermind, just die" over the course of the next few years; another is actually a portion of the Empire that was separated in an attempt to keep the situation from getting worse (it was having much worse economic troubles than the rest, and the regional government was effectively bankrupt) and could easily be a place for people to sell materials which are then shipped into the former-empire at fair and just prices massive markup.


Are there any "modern empires" that could have a civil war without one side having all the nation's military resources and the other side being insurgents?

Not under normal circumstances, I'd think. But there's a lot of build-up involved.

Here's the long version:

The empire is a "sort of constitutional monarchy", similar to something like the German Empire. However, the elected government is an important source of legitimacy and keeps various opposition groups mostly under control; up to this point it has been dominated by parties who benefit by working with the Imperials one way or another. This becomes more important as the system begins to fall apart.

The timeline of events leading up to civil war look like this (including some of the first 'phase' of fighting):

- Costly wars fuel growing opposition movement
- External pressures prevent or undermine government attempts to suppress movement (two important trade partners threatening embargoes, one supporting ideologically allied parties)
- War becomes less winnable and more expensive, economy takes sharp downturn
- Attempts to resolve the issues (including short-sighted measures that only worsen the problems after a year or so) fail
- Cuts are made in spending and another war ended, undermining the remaining prestige and legitimacy the regime has
- New elected body is strongly anti-war and has plans to curtail monarch's power, attempts to begin peace talks as the emperor withdraws completely and suddenly from public life
- Peace talks begin, but the government is overthrown by a coup - officers and members of the staunchly monarchist Imperial Guard arrest the majority of the officials and try to establish a new government
- Emperor remains absent, and nearby military forces surround the occupied government buildings and imperial palace; after negotiations concessions are granted by both sides and the elected government returns to power
- As news of the end of the peace talks comes out (the terms including loss of territory occupied after a previous war against the same country) and the new government's plans to release some border regions are made public, the emperor emerges and leads remaining loyalists in another coup
- Shortly after the takeover, some groups in the capital arm themselves and fight back, resulting in a bloody battle that ends with the imperial government using artillery to flatten several blocks
- In response, various areas of the empire take sides; reservists (who are present in large numbers due to earlier plans for another 'troop surge' to the front) are called in and the military forces at the front splinter further - some already partially demobilized by the elected government and taking up arms to defend it, others joining monarchist forces
- After the first period of fighting, the emperor dies, his heir taking up leadership of the monarchist faction and the anti-imperial coalition breaking as their main threat is sidelined

At the end of this, you have 3 main factions, each with sub-groups, and at least one of the factions implodes later. There's also a breakaway movement in another part of the country that none of them are really able to deal with. It isn't mentioned in the above, but the elected government actually secures aid from several regions that were annexed by the Empire in exchange for giving more-or-less immediate independence. So for a while they have the assistance of areas mostly untouched by the civil war.

Short version:
There's an expensive war of aggression, economy gets bad, government makes it worse, government can't deal with opposition growing, government loses face and legitimacy by doing things to try and close the massive budget hole, opposition gets elected, emperor runs off, peace is almost made despite coups and tension in capital, emperor comes back and kicks off a full-blown civil war in response to the peace deal, emperor dies, emperor's heir keeps fighting.

[snowblizz]

Are there any "modern empires" that could have a civil war without one side having all the nation's military resources and the other side being insurgents?
Plenty.
Almost all current wars are heavily factionally split. A national army may be a tool to integrate a population with differing values, culture regionalism etc etc etc but in a central authority breakdown scenario such loyalities can easily split the army (and other government institutions) apart.



2. If they're embargo'd how are they gettign the kind of supplies of raw materials like coal and iron (at a bare minimum), to manufacture things, keep power stations running, e.t.c.

To paraphrase Nicolas Cage's arms dealer from Lord of War, be disappointed if there wasn't an embargo to keep prices up. Plenty of ppl drive around on civil war petrol wearing jewelry brought to you by civil war gems while talking in a phone enabled by civil war metals.

[Kiero]

Are there any "modern empires" that could have a civil war without one side having all the nation's military resources and the other side being insurgents?

Depends on what lines the factions are arranged, and how long they've had to purge the military so that it matches their makeup.

Look at the recently averted coup in Turkey, for example. There were soldiers on both sides, but there weren't enough willing to defect to the rebels to make it a genuine fight.

[gkathellar]

Are there any "modern empires" that could have a civil war without one side having all the nation's military resources and the other side being insurgents?

That depends on how you define "modern empire."
If you mean large nation states without significant international sway? Sure, absolutely - it happens here and there. That said, it's more likely if the central government is less cohesive.
If you're referring more specifically to the current Great Powers (the U.S., China, Russia)? Probably not, although it's possible (but very unlikely) that in a true out-and-out civil war you might see some minor defection in the armed forces. Of the three, Russia is probably the most likely to fragment and China is probably the least, but none are really capable of it barring huge changes in internal power dynamics.
If you're talking about international powers of a scale in between those two (France, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia)? Yes in principle, but you'd have to examine it on a case-by-case basis.

That said, the more cohesive the armed forces and central government of a country are, the less likely any civil war in a modern setting is to resemble a real war.

[Carl]

@PersonMan: It isn't just the fuel that would be the issue, simple maintenance would get to be an issue from lack of parts and tools.

Also it's really hard to overstate just how much more massive a nation's war economy is than it's peacetime equivalent. To try and put it into perspective pre-war Germany was using 22 million tons of iron ore, during the 6 years of war it used 240 million tons, (both numbers taken from wikipedia). Bearing in mind the allready noted supply shortages over the last couple of years of the war, and bearing in mind that it takes time for an economy to grow it's unquestionably the case that their peak usage is even higher than that comparison would indicate. Equally whilst i was unable to get figures for a lot of things i did dig up some info by accident on carbon emissions from coal over the relevant time periods. Since emissions correlate fairly closely with usage assuming equivalent capability utilization technology, (an acceptable assumption for such a narrow time period), it becomes obvious from the coal slump post war that WW2 and it's runup where accounting at their peak for approximately a fifth of total global coal usage, Germany during the war consumed about a third of the total consumed by all participants, meaning it averaged a usage of nearly 7% of the global coal usage, and again the actual peak would have been quite a bit higher for reasons allready discussed.


And thats ignoring how the prevalence of plastics and composites has changed the civil market, in absolute terms we use a hell of a lot more steel and such like than we did during or before WW2, but in relative terms we probably use quite a bit less than we otherwise would. Conversely whilst plastics and civil type composites see a lot of use in military applications, the military is understandably slanted much more towards steel and aluminium, and a war would likely push plastics usage down anyway. What that means is a civil market is going to look very different in it's raw materials requirements.

Don't get men wrong the kind of arrangements you've described are absolutely capable of supporting a limited war economy, but any kind of serious war economy is going to consume such voracious amounts of resources that it will be blindingly obvious to all and sundry worldwide exactly what it is being used for, and supplying them with it is going to twist global markets into pretzels via the distortive effect it has on them. Equally any faction that either has greater industrial capabilities or better supply, (if everyone isn't maxing their capabilities out), is going to have a massive advantage, to a decisive degree.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Are there any "modern empires" that could have a civil war without one side having all the nation's military resources and the other side being insurgents?
If the cause of the civil war was along, say, racial or religious lines, you could potentially split the military and have a significant portion fighting against the established government.

Another possibility is a massed civilian uprising, with most of the military either going AWOL until the government's overthrown, refusing to fight against their families or actively joining the civilian side.

[Gnoman]

@PersonMan: It isn't just the fuel that would be the issue, simple maintenance would get to be an issue from lack of parts and tools.

Also it's really hard to overstate just how much more massive a nation's war economy is than it's peacetime equivalent. To try and put it into perspective pre-war Germany was using 22 million tons of iron ore, during the 6 years of war it used 240 million tons, (both numbers taken from wikipedia). Bearing in mind the allready noted supply shortages over the last couple of years of the war, and bearing in mind that it takes time for an economy to grow it's unquestionably the case that their peak usage is even higher than that comparison would indicate. Equally whilst i was unable to get figures for a lot of things i did dig up some info by accident on carbon emissions from coal over the relevant time periods. Since emissions correlate fairly closely with usage assuming equivalent capability utilization technology, (an acceptable assumption for such a narrow time period), it becomes obvious from the coal slump post war that WW2 and it's runup where accounting at their peak for approximately a fifth of total global coal usage, Germany during the war consumed about a third of the total consumed by all participants, meaning it averaged a usage of nearly 7% of the global coal usage, and again the actual peak would have been quite a bit higher for reasons allready discussed.

Which years are you using for your "prewar" figure? If it is in the period when Germany was rearming (first covertly, then openly starting in 1935) it could well be argued that a partial war economy was already in place. This could mean you're actually understating the difference in scale. On the other hand, 240 million tons in 6 years averages to 40 million tons, which (depending on how great a period the prewar figure is spread across - if that's 22 million tons per year then the scale merely doubled) means you could be overstating it.

[Carl]

@Gnoman: The 240 million tons was pulled from wikipedia's article on ww2 economics, (note i said doble because despite my off the cuff 6 yar comment ww2 for germany went under the 6 year mark by several months so it comes out pretty close to 22 million tons a year average, bearing in mind my point that the german economy probably declined from early 44 or so onwards), the 22 million ton figure is a per year figure is from an article on swedish iron ore in ww2, so it probably is from the rearmament period. But using pre-hitler figures if i could find them would be awkward anyway as germany was still pulling itself out of the depression when he took over, so it would be lower than expected because of that i'm sure. Also note the figure for germany in ww2 ignore the steel and finished steel products sweden sent to germany through till november 44.

[Gnoman]

So German industry was roughly two to three times more resource-intensive during the war (accounting for vagaries such as the Norwegian iron exports you mentioned and the several months short of six that Germany lasted), and if we take into account the effects of Allied bombing and the inefficiencies of production due to things like slave labor five to seven would be a fair enough figure. That's actually surprisingly high. If the charts I'm looking at are correct, US industry peaked in 1942 at around the same level as the 1937 high. I suspect that the relative levels of prewar industrialization and economic strength made a big difference.

[Carl]

@Gnoman: if you look at the US resource usage figures from WW2 and then compare them to germany thats no surprise, even accounting for all the leveraging of industrial capacity in occupied countries by germany the industrial figures for the US are nowhere near as hypermassive as you'd expect. Hell the UK achieved half the industrial output, (based on raw resource intake), edging out the USSR by quite a margin, despite having a smaller workforce and land area to work with than germany did not counting the occupied area's. Overall the Uk probably had the largest relative economy of the lot during the war.

That said the drop in coal usage is far and away the most significant number IMO. It really helps ram home with extreme force exactly how hyper massive war economies where next to non-war economies.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think there's some selective measuring going on there, focus on particular things that are easy to measure and that go up during wartime, but that miss large chunks of economic activity.

[Vinyadan]

Notice that Germany didn't do a good job optimizing its industry during the war. I think its output was only maximized under Speer (42-45), and even then he had to fight Goebbels, who wanted to send valuable workers into prison camps.
Many of the forced labourers from foreign countries actually didn't work in the industry, instead they got the ugly jobs like going on the street to turn off gas conduits during air strikes or repairing electricity pylons with aeroplanes still flying around.
Some of these workers were forced to take some sort of unwilling revenge when they tried to get back home, because Germany had been so devastated that there was nothing left to eat, so they ended up having to eat dead Germans on the way back.

[Lemmy]

How difficult (if even possible) would it be for a sword to pierce (not slice) through heavy armor? Like... Could it actually be expected happen with any real frequency?

[snowblizz]

How difficult (if even possible) would it be for a sword to pierce (not slice) through heavy armor? Like... Could it actually be expected happen with any real frequency?

It could. But it'll depend as always...

The estoc is a sword designed for piercing thrusts through armour, it has no slashing edge.

Will depend on the armour type and quality though, a well-made 15th-16th centure breastplate? Nope. Going through chainmail (the heaviest armour for long periods of time) or lower quality plates, it probably could. Normally you want to go around armour though so even the estoc and similar swords would try to hit gaps and joints as weakpoints.

[Carl]

I think there's some selective measuring going on there, focus on particular things that are easy to measure and that go up during wartime, but that miss large chunks of economic activity.

I'm not really sure what your trying to say here, certainly i'm focusing on a few points, but that because A) it's what i can find data on B) as evidenced by the size of the raw numbers next to everything else they're some of the most important.

It all comes back to that old chestnut about logistics. Logistics doesn't start in reality when some finished good is loaded onto a truck, it starts with the miners and farmer that provide the raw materials that are refined and then put through the manufacturing industry, that are then put on the backs of trucks to go to the front. As such examining the increase in usage of materials, and especially the most common wartime materials, (iron ore and coal for all involved), provides a very clear measure of the exact "size" of the economy and how it's grown. It's not perfect ofc by any measure and a true evaluation requires far more detailed data on how efficiently they're refining raw materials, and processing refined goods into finished goods. Swedish iron ore for example was of special benefit to Germany in this regard because of it's high natural purity. But generally within such a narrow tiem period fundamentals of the underlying industrial plant rarely change drastically, as a result there's not much room for differences in raw material intake to not be nearly synonymous with economy size.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm not really sure what your trying to say here, certainly i'm focusing on a few points, but that because A) it's what i can find data on B) as evidenced by the size of the raw numbers next to everything else they're some of the most important.

It all comes back to that old chestnut about logistics. Logistics doesn't start in reality when some finished good is loaded onto a truck, it starts with the miners and farmer that provide the raw materials that are refined and then put through the manufacturing industry, that are then put on the backs of trucks to go to the front. As such examining the increase in usage of materials, and especially the most common wartime materials, (iron ore and coal for all involved), provides a very clear measure of the exact "size" of the economy and how it's grown. It's not perfect ofc by any measure and a true evaluation requires far more detailed data on how efficiently they're refining raw materials, and processing refined goods into finished goods. Swedish iron ore for example was of special benefit to Germany in this regard because of it's high natural purity. But generally within such a narrow tiem period fundamentals of the underlying industrial plant rarely change drastically, as a result there's not much room for differences in raw material intake to not be nearly synonymous with economy size.


I'm saying that this "usage of raw materials for heavy industry" is only a measure one particular slice of the economic pie, and by only looking at that one slice at a time when it's going to be bigger, you're finding a very exaggerated boost that's not really anything like the whole story. There are other economic activities that are sacrificed or diminished, but you never see those if you focus on steel production and the like.

It's a bit like looking at the medical industry during a nasty influenza outbreak, seeing all those extra hours of work, and saying "A flu outbreak is good for the economy!"

[Carl]

I'm saying that this "usage of raw materials for heavy industry" is only a measure one particular slice of the economic pie, and by only looking at that one slice at a time when it's going to be bigger, you're finding a very exaggerated boost that's not really anything like the whole story. There are other economic activities that are sacrificed or diminished, but you never see those if you focus on steel production and the like.

It's a bit like looking at the medical industry during a nasty influenza outbreak, seeing all those extra hours of work, and saying "A flu outbreak is good for the economy!"

I still don't know what your trying to say. Yes certain purely civil aspects of the economy that have nothing to do with heavy manufacturing unquestionably took a hit, thats why rationing was a thing in most countries after all. But thats largely irrelevant to the point under discussion. Hence why i haven't even touched on it. We're not discussing the economy in monetary terms, (which undoubtedly still boomed to a fair degree, given the debts most belligerents incurred fighting it), where discussing it in terms of trade and its effects in both quantity and type. In terms of raw amounts of imported material's, heavy manufacturing from raw materials dwarfs everything else. It's just inherent in the nature of such manufacturing.

[Mike_G]

How difficult (if even possible) would it be for a sword to pierce (not slice) through heavy armor? Like... Could it actually be expected happen with any real frequency?

I don't think it's really possible with any regularity. Swords designed for defeating armor wree designed to thrust through the gaps rather than through the plates themselves.

Most armor did have areas that you could target with a thrust, so a sword thrust could defeat armor, maybe, but I would need to see evidence that you could thrust through a plate. I've heard claims of thrusting through mail, but I haven't seen a good test.

[Max_Killjoy]

I still don't know what your trying to say. Yes certain purely civil aspects of the economy that have nothing to do with heavy manufacturing unquestionably took a hit, thats why rationing was a thing in most countries after all. But thats largely irrelevant to the point under discussion. Hence why i haven't even touched on it. We're not discussing the economy in monetary terms, (which undoubtedly still boomed to a fair degree, given the debts most belligerents incurred fighting it), where discussing it in terms of trade and its effects in both quantity and type. In terms of raw amounts of imported material's, heavy manufacturing from raw materials dwarfs everything else. It's just inherent in the nature of such manufacturing.


This is what you said:



Also it's really hard to overstate just how much more massive a nation's war economy is than it's peacetime equivalent.


That statement is wrong, and the ways in which it is wrong have been explained. It only looks "much more massive" because you're focusing on the parts of the economy that are increased during an industrially-intensive war.

[snowblizz]

This is what you said:



That statement is wrong, and the ways in which it is wrong have been explained. It only looks "much more massive" because you're focusing on the parts of the economy that are increased during an industrially-intensive war.

It's actually not wrong at all. It doesn't "just look massive" it can be measured to be so, eg by checking the GDPs of warring nations. And the massive debts they rack up since they are consuming and essentially blowing it all up.

[gkathellar]

How difficult (if even possible) would it be for a sword to pierce (not slice) through heavy armor? Like... Could it actually be expected happen with any real frequency?

As others have said, not really - at least against undamaged plate. If you'd heavily cracked or otherwise damaged an area of the surrounding material, your odds would be much better (though still not good barring a real break). It also depends on the mobility of your target, if only because it's harder to get a solid thrust in on a steel plate that's moving around than on one that is.

There's also the issue of your sword's durability. Stabbing directly at solid armor is an excellent way to degrade your weapon and its edge quickly.


It's actually not wrong at all. It doesn't "just look massive" it can be measured to be so, eg by checking the GDPs of warring nations. And the massive debts they rack up since they are consuming and essentially blowing it all up.

Two things worth noting:
GDP also isn't a good sole measure of the size or power of an economy, because there are a lot of things it doesn't account for (in particular, the value of human capital and public spending).
War-footing economies have been generally larger than peacetime ones for most of recorded history, but it's worth noting that there are ways to simulate wartime economic forces (major projects are the big one), and that most governments have been doing so on a consistent basis at least since WW2. So while "war economies are bigger" is probably a useful piece of wisdom as relates to pre-WW2 states, it's not an absolute or a necessity. The main reason that war tends to increase the size of the economy is that it empowers/compels states to stimulate their economies in ways that many lacked the ability to do for most of history.

[Max_Killjoy]

It's actually not wrong at all. It doesn't "just look massive" it can be measured to be so, eg by checking the GDPs of warring nations. And the massive debts they rack up since they are consuming and essentially blowing it all up.


Yeah, those debts... they're part of what's not taken into account, part of what offsets much of that illusionary boost.

Never mind that GDP itself is a terrible metric.

[gkathellar]

Never mind that GDP itself is a terrible metric.

It's the Dow Jones Industrial Average of economic measurements - technically it is compiled from real data that is technically related to what it's claiming to measure, but the data is arbitrarily selected and arbitrarily arranged, so uh yeah.

[Mike_G]

It's actually not wrong at all. It doesn't "just look massive" it can be measured to be so, eg by checking the GDPs of warring nations. And the massive debts they rack up since they are consuming and essentially blowing it all up.

To a certain extent is is misleading.

We built a lot of tanks and planes during WWII. But we did not build many passenger cars. Civilian manufacturing is reduced, redirected to military manufacturing.

Stuff gets rationed, so you have to offset the increase in military consumption of resources with the reduced civilian consumption.

Debt is...smoke and mirrors a lot of the time. You need steel to build a tank, you can fake the money, paying the tank manufacturer on credit, covering that with bonds and so on. If you lose the war, it's not like Mercedes can send a bill to the defeated government and expect it to be honored.

[Carl]

That statement is wrong, and the ways in which it is wrong have been explained. It only looks "much more massive" because you're focusing on the parts of the economy that are increased during an industrially-intensive war.


No it really isn't. War economies really are that much more massive. Period. They're not sustainable ofc, thats the nature of a war economy, and it's entire point, it's a surge effort to meet a do or die need. That said i think you took my ad hoc use of economy out of context there as well. I was talking strictly about the manufacturing portion at that point.


I'm still not really sure i understand your point TBH.


@Mike_G: Yes and no, there was a hell of a lot less production aimed at civilians. But they need a hell of a lot less stuff even under normal non-war conditions than a member of the armed forces once you remember not only their personal kit, but also all the kit that goes into supplying them thereafter. Remember a lot of military equipment above the infantryman level masses a lot more than even a car. For the tonnage at least of manufactured goods contained in a single sherman you could build 15 cars. Thats 3 per crewmen. Even today we don't go through that many cars per head in that timeframe. Hell even today with americans, (the most voracious in terms of number of different cars owned), the average is only 4 times that, and given the number of those that are doubtless second hand...

Equally, yes debt fuelled economic activity by the nature of robbing peter to pay paul doesn't amount to a permanent increase in the size of the economy, but while that money is being spent the economy absolutely is larger. It's just going to be smaller afterwards while they pay off the debt.



Having finally found a useful number though i think the really telling part as far as the ww2 economy is how massively the global merchant marine expanded. Over a 50% increase. That puts into stark contrast just how much in the way of goods was being moved around. Overall i still consider the coal usage figure more important as they're a nearly direct measure of energy input into the economy, (almost all energy came from fossil fuels and energy in has a direct correlation to output), which will tie directly into output.

[Max_Killjoy]

No it really isn't. War economies really are that much more massive. Period. They're not sustainable ofc, thats the nature of a war economy, and it's entire point, it's a surge effort to meet a do or die need. That said i think you took my ad hoc use of economy out of context there as well. I was talking strictly about the manufacturing portion at that point.

Inside that "not sustainable" appears to be where a lot of the "it's no where near as big as it looks" issues has been shoved.

Oh well.

[Vinyadan]

War economy is enormous, you can get it from this: unemployment virtually disappears. Take WWII, women working on three shifts and men far away needing enormous, state-of-the-art equipment? Bookkeepers who now operate Shermans and anti-air cannons? Those need a more performing economy than ledgers!
The economy bloats enormously, because the demand gets crazy: three dudes who maybe could have owned a bike each (WWII times) now need a tank. And that tank may be destroyed pretty fast, also increasing the demand: there is no saturation here, production can go on without end.
Not to say anything of the amount of money that goes into research. In America you have the Manhattan Project and that little radar on shells, in Germany you have sarin, turbojet, missilistics.
And then you have to send those things, and so on.

You make debts. So what? Do you think the largest economies in the world don't have the largest debts? Take a look at Germany and the US, the fact that you can make debts to finance your economy means that people trust you and expect that you can give the money back later with interests. Debts only become a problem when people think that you can't pay them back, because most will not finance you any more and you become slave of the only one who still gives you money.

[Max_Killjoy]

War economy is enormous, you can get it from this: unemployment virtually disappears. Take WWII, women working on three shifts and men far away needing enormous, state-of-the-art equipment? Bookkeepers who now operate Shermans and anti-air cannons? Those need a more performing economy than ledgers!
The economy bloats enormously, because the demand gets crazy: three dudes who maybe could have owned a bike each (WWII times) now need a tank. And that tank may be destroyed pretty fast, also increasing the demand: there is no saturation here, production can go on without end.
Not to say anything of the amount of money that goes into research. In America you have the Manhattan Project and that little radar on shells, in Germany you have sarin, turbojet, missilistics.
And then you have to send those things, and so on.

You make debts. So what? Do you think the largest economies in the world don't have the largest debts? Take a look at Germany and the US, the fact that you can make debts to finance your economy means that people trust you and expect that you can give the money back later with interests. Debts only become a problem when people think that you can't pay them back, because most will not finance you any more and you become slave of the only one who still gives you money.

The women and too-old-for-service men who are working in those factories, aren't working there in addition to the previous workers, they're working INSTEAD, because the other workers are off at war.

The tanks and military trucks and combat aircraft are being built INSTEAD of other things.

Debt can't pile up forever, eventually you spend more servicing the debt than you do on anything else, and you're borrowing from one lender to pay off the other.

[Carl]

Inside that "not sustainable" appears to be where a lot of the "it's no where near as big as it looks" issues has been shoved.

Oh well.

I think i get where your coming from, i had a suspicion that might be it but didn't want to jump off half cocked as what you'd said so far could have been taken several different ways quite easily.

Size does not = sustainability. Simply put whether a given level of economic output is sustainable has no effect on weather it's bigger or larger, their seperate statistics and the size of one does not determine the other.

[gkathellar]

The women and too-old-for-service men who are working in those factories, aren't working there in addition to the previous workers, they're working INSTEAD, because the other workers are off at war.

The tanks and military trucks and combat aircraft are being built INSTEAD of other things.

Yes and no. In many cases the amount of production during WW2 vastly exceeded the amount of production that had been happening before, because the demands of the war effort were enormous. Factories were built, jobs were created, etc. Of course, this was still coming out of the Great Depression, so it's not like the nation was running at peak capacity. The war effort provided demand, and so we got the mill of supply running - but it had been there from the start.

But the "yes" part is that the U.S. took one look at the resulting prosperity and said, "let's not step this down, chaps." Rather than scale down in the war's aftermath, we kept things running at full heat by continuing the legacy of the New Deal and instituting Great Society programs like the G.I. bill and the Interstate Highway System. The Cold War was part of this, but only really insofar as it helped to ensure a steady supply of political will.

The moral is that war economies are not a consequence of war so much as they're a consequence of large, centralized governments flexing their economic muscles. War is a great justification for this, but any sufficiently organized and empowered state can do it under the right peacetime circumstances.


Debt can't pile up forever, eventually you spend more servicing the debt than you do on anything else, and you're borrowing from one lender to pay off the other.

Sure, but that's once you pass a critical point. Debt payments can end up as one more force driving the economy, and if the programs paid for by debt create adequate social returns in the long term, they can easily pay for themselves. This is why some economists say that nations are better off running a deficit.

But you're right in general principle when it comes to wartime debts, because nations don't get much in the way of economic returns for bombs built except in the sense that they might help to avert greater losses. Pumping money into the arms industry does help it to develop, but it needs to be fed come peacetime for that to have any benefits, which creates another stack of potential issues and economic dependencies. When you use your debts to build schools, the payoffs are more obvious.

[Vinyadan]

The women and too-old-for-service men who are working in those factories, aren't working there in addition to the previous workers, they're working INSTEAD, because the other workers are off at war.

The tanks and military trucks and combat aircraft are being built INSTEAD of other things.

Debt can't pile up forever, eventually you spend more servicing the debt than you do on anything else, and you're borrowing from one lender to pay off the other.

Yes, instead of smaller, lest costly things, which need less resources.

I don't know what you are trying to say here: do you think that the USA would have built the equivalent of three hundred thousand aircraft in four years, if they hadn't needed them to win the war? That's a lot of tin foil (by which I mean aluminium).

Debt totally can pile up forever, if it's done methodically: again, look at healthy, developed economies. As long as you have the trust of the investors, you can do anything. Regarding permanent war economy proper, there are theories about that, but they of course cannot be verified IRL.

It's generally agreed upon that the USA got back to being healthy because of the war, after having struggled since 1929. Capital influx (and smart economists) will do this. And the US GDP increased a lot. And, after the war, unemployment was a much lesser problem. A reason for high employment? Thanks to investment and capital, the US paid industries to pay people, they gave them a little plus the more they paid their workers.

It is hard to talk with you about this, however, because it's not clear what you think economic growth or larger economy mean.

[Tiktakkat]

The women and too-old-for-service men who are working in those factories, aren't working there in addition to the previous workers, they're working INSTEAD, because the other workers are off at war.

The tanks and military trucks and combat aircraft are being built INSTEAD of other things.

Debt can't pile up forever, eventually you spend more servicing the debt than you do on anything else, and you're borrowing from one lender to pay off the other.

Amplifying on this:

What you have with a war economy is Bastiat's Parable of the Broken Window write large:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

That is what Max is saying, plus:

Those women and non-combat-fit men are working;
But the able-bodied men, who presumably could work much more efficiently, are not working.
They might be "employed" at being soldiers, but in terms of an economy, their "job" is turning everything being produced . . . into junk.
There is no growth potential in that.

As Vinyadan acknowledges:

And that tank may be destroyed pretty fast, also increasing the demand: there is no saturation here, production can go on without end.
Precisely!
That is why it is not beneficial - all you are producing is pre-destroyed junk.
And you aren't producing it efficiently!
And you are endangering your most efficient producers to junk it!

Then as Max notes, that military equipment is instead of other things.
While bombers can be converted, and transports almost always are, fighters cannot be. Everyone is a civilian aircraft not transporting goods.
Vinyadan cites a tank as 3 cars. That is 3 cars not taking people to work.
Every truck in the military is one not hauling raw materials to a factory, or finished goods to markets.
Divert enough of that, and it is not merely things sucking big time for civilians, but you will start reducing your production ability.

"In certain circumstances" . . . you can get a massive boost from infrastructure and manufacturing expansion.
Said circumstances being a non-saturated, frontier-level marketplace.
Like . . . the U.S. in WWII.
The U.S. was still woefully undeveloped going into 1939 compared to the U.K., France, and Germany. When the U.S. geared up, we became "the arsenal of democracy".
The rest of the combatants?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II#GDP
GDP for everyone except the UK and US drops from 1938 to 1945.
The US increases over 75%.
Everyone else? 20% at the most.
And was not sustainable due to ongoing damage.

As for debt, it is one of those things that is nice in theory, ugly in practice.
Mess with your debt to consumer-based GDP ratio too much and you risk runaway inflation. Throw in the confiscatory taxes that are used to try and stave it off, and you are pretty much gutting your middle and upper classes and hoping you survive the aftermath long enough for new ones to grow before your government (at the constitution level) is replaced.

Overall, war economies look massive for two reasons:
1. They consider only the amount spent on the military.
When that goes from 2-15% of GDP to 75-125% of GDP (remember deficit spending), of course it is going to look disproportionately gigantic.
Remember to include all the civilian GDP you have voided, and suddenly it is not so impressive.
2. The last major military mobilization that people "remember" was at a time when the economy and infrastructure were not fully developed, and could be massively expanded.
That potential no longer exists, and will not be replicated.


The war effort provided demand, and so we got the mill of supply running - but it had been there from the start.

Actually, it wasn't.
Even you note that factories were built. By definition that means the capacity was not there from the start.


But the "yes" part is that the U.S. took one look at the resulting prosperity and said, "let's not step this down, chaps." Rather than scale down in the war's aftermath, we kept things running at full heat by continuing the legacy of the New Deal and instituting Great Society programs like the G.I. bill and the Interstate Highway System.

No we didn't. There was no prosperity in the U.S. after WWII. There was infrastructure, but it was all producing war materiel.
What happened was that the people who owned it all looked at the end of their government contracts and said "Hey, we need to keep making money. What can we do with this stuff?" So they created the Consumer Economy.
That is what finally ended the Great Depression, not the production demands of WWII, which compounded the debt problem.

As for the G.I. Bill (1944) and Interstate Highway System (1956), you need some serious time travel for them to be part of the Great Society (1964-1965).
As for their effects, the G.I. Bill was meant to avoid the post-WWI problems with demobilized soldiers, particularly those that resulted in the Bonus Army, which caused the political destruction of Herbert Hoover and subsequent rise of Franklin Roosevelt.
The Interstate Highway System was a military program. That it had incredible infrastructure benefits was a "side effect".

[Carl]

Sorry Tiktakkat but your projecting the US industrial situation in WW2 as a typical war economy. It's not. Whats become very evident from my research is that the US never really had to stretch its economy the way everyone else did. This is very evident in how US industry more or less continued to seamlessly grow economically and industrially post war when everyone else, even on the winning side suffered badly in the aftermath. Basically it's clear the US economy was never grown during the war beyond a sustainable level. Europen however badly overgrew their economies to meet the demands of supplying the war. This is also obvious in the raw materials consumption values. German consumed around 2/3 the Iron ore the US did with a considerably smaller workforce and even the Uk managed and a third, (which matches the tonnage of merchant shipping built by the two in ratio terms, so that confirms it's not a bad yardstick on total production), with an even smaller, (approximately a 6th the population), workforce. When you factor in how much bigger a chunk of the UK population was in uniform that disparity gets even worse. (7.6 million from the british isles out of a total pop of 46 million, vs 12 million from all states out of a population of 240 million for the US). What that shows very clearly is the Us didn't even approach the limits of how hard it could have run its economy had it wanted to. So saying we'll never see anything equivalent is automatically inaccurate as the US never saw the same kind of economic surge in WW2 that other belligerents saw.

Equally, as has been pointed out, supplying the goods a soldier needs, and the means to ship those goods to him is inherently allways going to be vastly more expensive from an economic PoV than supply a whole glut of civilians with goods. To try and put it into perspective the average car in 1939 cost an american $700 dollars (https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=average+price+of+a+US+car+in+1939), A house average just over $7,000 dollars. A sherman cost $33,0000 dollars and a P-51 Mustang cost over half again as much as that, ($50,985). Add on the costs of shipping those around, training the crew, and the logistics train that keeps them supplied, and well your probably starting to get the picture. The reduction in the civil economy hurt the overall size of the economy, certainly, but the amount of goods produced vastly outweighs that both in money and tonnage terms.

Also on the point of women workers, remember that prior to the second world war women where a distinct minority in the workplace. Their position had certainly improved with and after WW1, but WW2 really kicked the door open. So many of the woman replacing the men in the workplace would not have been working at all but for the war, and soldier still get paid so when they got leave they could actually contribute to the civil economy more, as for that matter could the woman who where now receiving wages they would not have otherwise received.

[WarKitty]

Are there any particular plausible materials for a D&D game that would be not steel, but would be sharp and hard enough to function roughly similarly?

[Vinyadan]

Are there any particular plausible materials for a D&D game that would be not steel, but would be sharp and hard enough to function roughly similarly?

I understand that steel is still the best, but I think druids have a spell to metallize wood and make it equivalent to steel.

[WarKitty]

I understand that steel is still the best, but I think druids have a spell to metallize wood and make it equivalent to steel.

I'm really looking for realistic non-magical alternatives. Doesn't have to be something that would necessarily be common or easy to produce, just something that would be available without requiring electricity and the like to refine.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm really looking for realistic non-magical alternatives. Doesn't have to be something that would necessarily be common or easy to produce, just something that would be available without requiring electricity and the like to refine.

Honestly, without industrial-age or later refinement techniques and modern metallurgy, you're looking at steel, steel, or steel.

In the 21st century, if someone really needed a better-than-steel alloy for blades or armor against blades, they might be able to eventually come up with something.

[Vinyadan]

Sorry Tiktakkat but your projecting the US industrial situation in WW2 as a typical war economy. It's not. Whats become very evident from my research is that the US never really had to stretch its economy the way everyone else did.


I remember reading a manual for American servicemen in England from WW2; they were explicitly told that they had not suffered war deprivation, while England had, and to consequently hold their tongue if they felt wealthy in comparison to what they saw.

The manual for Britons in France also noted something similar, saying that, while England might have suffered during the war, it was nothing compared to France. It actually said to be careful accepting gifts, because what looked like a simple meal might in reality be all a family possessed.

[Pauly]

The idea that war is good for an economy derived from the USA's experience of WW1, not WW2. If you're arguing WW2 you're arguing the wrong war.

Essentially the USA was only a fringe combatant in WW1, so did not suffer the manpower losses, rationing et al that a total war entails. However it was a supplier of war material to England and France. So huge amounts of cash/gold (not debt) were sent from Europe to the USA to pay for the production. USA's economic boom in the 1920s came from the trenches. Also the idea of war profiteers, although not a new idea, was popularized after WW1 and again the reality, if not perception, was that it was US manufacturers that made the large profits not the European manufacturers.

This idea was recycled and revamped following WW2 expressly by communist sympathizers who used this idea as a means to criticize capitalism.

[Mr Beer]

Are there any particular plausible materials for a D&D game that would be not steel, but would be sharp and hard enough to function roughly similarly?

You can use bronze for effective weapons and armour. Steel is better though.

Not sure how I'd model it in D&D terms, probably a -1 penalty to AC for armour and give bronze weapons a chance to break when parrying steel ones (say on whatever you use for critical failures). Or make armour as good as steel in AC terms but add some weight to reflect the need for extra metal.

[Pauly]

Are there any particular plausible materials for a D&D game that would be not steel, but would be sharp and hard enough to function roughly similarly?

Brass and copper were superseded by iron because iron is stronger, even though copper or bronze can be sharpened to a finer degree.

Iron was superseded by steel because steel is less brittle and lighter than iron.

Steel has been by superseded by aluminium in areas where lightness is the prime requirement.
Steel has been superseded by titanium and alloys where increased strength is more important than increased cost.

Metals are being superseded by composite materials ceramic/carbon fiber in high tech applications. But modern composites function until they fail (i.e. they are much harder to break.but break not bend).

Stone technology (flint/obsidian) is very good until your opponent has metal, then it is completely inferior.

Wood although it is manifestly inferior at a cutting or piercing is still viable as concussive weapon. Fantasy worlds have previously imagined types of hardwood that can function as a steel like substitute. The practical problem is that if you have wood that is as hard as steel how do you chop down the tree or work the timber? Just look up the difficulty of working Australian Iron bark trees, you can wear out 2 or 3 chainsaw blades cutting down one tree. Steel can be heated to become malleable but wood doesn't have that property, and sharpening and repair become significant issues.

[Vinyadan]

If anyone is interested, I just found a little "encyclopaedia of the duel", written in Italy in 1562. It isn't exactly the easiest read, but it seems to contain everything about the subject from a cultural, historical and consuetudinary point of view. https://ia802708.us.archive.org/24/items/bub_gb_N88ixAdexf0C/bub_gb_N88ixAdexf0C.pdf

[Lemmy]

Hmm... That gets me thinking... Assuming you want to craft the best possible sword, using modern technology, meant for actual combat against moderately armored opponents... What'd be the best option for design/material/forging&crafting method?

[Brother Oni]

Brass and copper were superseded by iron because iron is stronger, even though copper or bronze can be sharpened to a finer degree.

Slight correction here, bronze was supplanted by softer, weaker iron, because iron was a lot cheaper and easier to make once you worked out how to smelt it - there's some evidence that the Phoenicians possibly went as far abroad as Cornwall in England to get the tin needed for better bronze alloys.

It's not until people figured out how to make steel that iron based weapons were finally better than bronze weapons from a performance aspect.

From what I've read, brass was an even better material than bronze, but even harder to get - it's an alloy of copper and zinc, of which the only major source of zinc available to the ancient world was Iran (American and Australian deposits being inaccessible).

The usual caveat applies that these are all general comparisons and a specific X metal is better than than Y metal contrast is entirely dependent on the exact alloys involved (arsenic bronzes aren't as good as tin bronzes for example, plus its smelting tended to be detrimental to the health of the smiths due to the arsenic vapours).


Stone technology (flint/obsidian) is very good until your opponent has metal, then it is completely inferior.

Not necessarily - Aztec macuahuitls and obsidian arrows were surprisingly effective against the steel equipped, gunpowder weapons and and horse riding conquistadors.

[Tiktakkat]

Sorry Tiktakkat but your projecting the US industrial situation in WW2 as a typical war economy. It's not. Whats become very evident from my research is that the US never really had to stretch its economy the way everyone else did. This is very evident in how US industry more or less continued to seamlessly grow economically and industrially post war when everyone else, even on the winning side suffered badly in the aftermath. Basically it's clear the US economy was never grown during the war beyond a sustainable level. Europen however badly overgrew their economies to meet the demands of supplying the war.

You have all of that completely backwards:

I am not the one projecting the U.S. industrial situation in WWII as a typical war economy; that is what you and others are doing, assuming that an economy can grow in such fantastic leaps and bounds without any strain.
Which is why you are wrong about the U.S. having to stretch its economy. It absolutely did. This is seen simply and directly in the record of the government imposing wage freezes to keep businesses from outbidding each for employees, along with the full scale rationing, and related economic controls, imposed in the U.S.

Between those two elements you completely miss the forest for the trees - even as you note that the U.S. did not strain as much as other economies, yet blithely overlooking those very real stresses, and the further need to run an active guest worker program on top of them.

The U.S. economy was under immense strain during WWII. That is why the Great Depression did not end until after the war, when all that surplus infrastructure was converted to fueling the Consumer Economy.
However, the U.S. economy had huge amounts of room to grow, as it was still heavily driven by farming, whereas the European economies were not. That meant that even with that strain the U.S. could manage that incredible growth.


Equally, as has been pointed out, supplying the goods a soldier needs, and the means to ship those goods to him is inherently allways going to be vastly more expensive from an economic PoV than supply a whole glut of civilians with goods. . . . The reduction in the civil economy hurt the overall size of the economy, certainly, but the amount of goods produced vastly outweighs that both in money and tonnage terms.

You are conflating two different aspects, and in the process handwaving all the negative effects.
IF the reduction hurt the overall size of the economy, THEN it very clearly strained that economy.
The TYPE of goods produced is absolutely relevant. Just because you produce more "expensive" and bulky military goods does not mean you are producing more valuable goods. That's like suggesting every farmer switch to producing wine grapes because wine is more valuable per unit of weight in trade, completely ignoring the need for other food, whether the particular land can support wine grapes, the effect of competition, and more. Economics simply does not work that way.
Add on top that war materiel is both not competing in the general market and requires taxation to finance, which drains the funds available to fuel the general market, and you have an even further economic drain.


Also on the point of women workers, remember that prior to the second world war women where a distinct minority in the workplace. Their position had certainly improved with and after WW1, but WW2 really kicked the door open. So many of the woman replacing the men in the workplace would not have been working at all but for the war, and soldier still get paid so when they got leave they could actually contribute to the civil economy more, as for that matter could the woman who where now receiving wages they would not have otherwise received.

That ignores that soldiers on leave tended to be overseas, and thus contributing to the civil economy in other countries.
And it ignores that women were overwhelming being paid less than men, thus reducing the effect they could have on the economy.
And it ignores that the civil economy was tanked, and there was nothing much to spend money on anyway.
And most of all, it ignores that in order to pay the soldiers, who were not making any product that could contribute to the civil economy, money had to be taxed away from the women, AND other workers, AND employers in the first place, thus reducing the amount available for the civil economy even further.


So again:
Max is right, and those of you arguing with him are wrong.
The reason a wartime economy looks so huge to you is that you are only looking at the production of war materiel, and not considering the numerous costs imposed by producing that war materiel instead of civilian consumer goods.
At best you might be able to kludge out a 10-20% increase, provided you go to a heavily managed economy, with massive rationing, severe displacement across all sectors and phases of the economy, and acquire massive debt.
To gain any long term benefits from that however you must, in addition to winning of course, have been in a situation where you can actually switch your economy from other sectors to manufacturing. That doesn't exist in the developed world these days, and engaging such switches will have severe negative effects in both the short and long term.


However:


The idea that war is good for an economy derived from the USA's experience of WW1, not WW2. If you're arguing WW2 you're arguing the wrong war.

Essentially the USA was only a fringe combatant in WW1, so did not suffer the manpower losses, rationing et al that a total war entails. However it was a supplier of war material to England and France. So huge amounts of cash/gold (not debt) were sent from Europe to the USA to pay for the production. USA's economic boom in the 1920s came from the trenches. Also the idea of war profiteers, although not a new idea, was popularized after WW1 and again the reality, if not perception, was that it was US manufacturers that made the large profits not the European manufacturers.

This idea was recycled and revamped following WW2 expressly by communist sympathizers who used this idea as a means to criticize capitalism.

Partly.

The U.K. and France did in fact take on a huge amount of debt during WWI.
They paid gold at first, and when that ran out they borrowed from the U.S.
As a result, when the war ended, they felt the need to demand massive reparations from Germany so they could pay off that debt, as the U.S. was in no mood politically to wait.
That led directly to the post-war depression, which only eased when Europe went off the gold standard, and fiat-ed their way out of the cash crunch.

Also, what you note about perception is indeed highly relevant.
The U.S. did not need rationing, but it definitely imposed it, along with many other command economy elements, and suffered because of it.
When those were finally lifted, and the initial post-war depression passed, we got the Roaring 20s.
Of course then people went for trade protectionism and we got the Great Depression.

As for the idea of war being good for the economy, a sizable amount of that stems from the assertion that WWII ended the Great Depression, which is the heart of the ongoing battle between the Keynesians and Monetarists.

[fusilier]

If anyone is interested, I just found a little "encyclopaedia of the duel", written in Italy in 1562. It isn't exactly the easiest read, but it seems to contain everything about the subject from a cultural, historical and consuetudinary point of view. https://ia802708.us.archive.org/24/items/bub_gb_N88ixAdexf0C/bub_gb_N88ixAdexf0C.pdf

That's cool. Unfortunately, my Italian isn't good enough to read it without a considerable time spent translating. (usually copying it into a machine translator, then cleaning it up based upon what I know of the language).

It appears to have a very complete index at the beginning though, so if interested in a particular subject it could allow one to quickly focus in on the right section.

Also, I learned the word "consuetudinary" from your post. :-)

[Lemmy]

Hmm... That gets me thinking... Assuming you want to craft the best possible sword, using modern technology, meant for actual combat against moderately armored opponents... What'd be the best option for design/material/forging&crafting method?
I actually found a pretty cool video answering my own question... Although I'd certainly love to hear other people's opinion on the matter...

Let's say, assuming you travel back in time to 1200 or something like that and can't bring a firearm with you but are allowed to carry the best sword you can find in modern days. :smallsmile:

[VoxRationis]

How big should an average battle be for 18th century European warfare? What's the range up and down from that? How big would the individual units be? (By that, I mean how big would the parts that move independently from one another in a battle be. I get that on an organizational level, the unit sizes go all the way down, but the general in command of a battle probably wouldn't be splitting individual platoons apart from each other, right?)

[Gnoman]

How big should an average battle be for 18th century European warfare? What's the range up and down from that? How big would the individual units be? (By that, I mean how big would the parts that move independently from one another in a battle be. I get that on an organizational level, the unit sizes go all the way down, but the general in command of a battle probably wouldn't be splitting individual platoons apart from each other, right?)

In the Seven Years War, battles tended to have 20-50 thousand soldiers per side. Raids involving much smaller forces were very common, and there were a few cases where armies reached 60-80 thousand.

[Carl]

@Tiktakkat: I have no idea how you think i've been focusing on the US, most of my data dig has dug up stuff for germany and britain. Also i'm sorry but no, the US may have pushed it's economy hard but it's self evident in the data that they didn't push their economy very hard compared to what they could have done. The whole point me and max_killjoy have been having a bit of a byplay on is that true war economies stress themselves beyodn the point of sustainability. the US never did that as evidenced by the postwar situation.

As for the rest, if your not going to measure an economy in terms of quantities or value of goods it's producing how do you measure? Ooops. You can't because those are the defining measures of the size and power of an economy. Your simply making nonsense up at this point to support your position as far as i'm concerned.

Also again stop projecting US onto everyone else. US soldiers spent a lot of their wages abroad, everyone else not so much. Even german troops in Norway where returning to germany during leave.

[Mike_G]

As for the idea of war being good for the economy, a sizable amount of that stems from the assertion that WWII ended the Great Depression, which is the heart of the ongoing battle between the Keynesians and Monetarists.

Building on this, look at any war other that WWII and none of them are seen as "saving" an economy.

Yes, lots of people are employed, and lost of stuff gets built, but most of the stuff that gets built is either destroyed, or pretty useless after the war ends.

After WWII, we discharged most of the military, so those people go back to saturating the labor pool, and we have a crapload of guns and tanks and bombers and warships that don't do us much good, and aren't easily converted to another role. And the War Bonds and borrowed money has to be repayed and bonuses and benefits for soldiers needs to be payed out.

War helps the economy the same way that the government paying a factory to build birdhouses and then throw them off a cliff would. Especially if they told the civilian market they couldn't use wood, because it was reserved for more birdhouses.

Wartime does lead to new technology, and often to breakthroughs in medicine, but that's a side effect, and could easily be replicated if a peacetime government poured even a fraction of it's wartime budget into R&D. It might be straying into forbidden territory, but imagine the cost of the Iraq war poured into infrastructure or new energy sources or healthcare or education.

I'm speaking as ex-military, and I'm proud to have worn the uniform, but I certainly was more of a drain on the taxpayer that I was a cog in the machine of the economy.

[Carl]

Building on this, look at any war other that WWII and none of them are seen as "saving" an economy.

Yes, lots of people are employed, and lost of stuff gets built, but most of the stuff that gets built is either destroyed, or pretty useless after the war ends.

After WWII, we discharged most of the military, so those people go back to saturating the labor pool, and we have a crapload of guns and tanks and bombers and warships that don't do us much good, and aren't easily converted to another role. And the War Bonds and borrowed money has to be repayed and bonuses and benefits for soldiers needs to be payed out.

War helps the economy the same way that the government paying a factory to build birdhouses and then throw them off a cliff would. Especially if they told the civilian market they couldn't use wood, because it was reserved for more birdhouses.

Wartime does lead to new technology, and often to breakthroughs in medicine, but that's a side effect, and could easily be replicated if a peacetime government poured even a fraction of it's wartime budget into R&D. It might be straying into forbidden territory, but imagine the cost of the Iraq war poured into infrastructure or new energy sources or healthcare or education.

I'm speaking as ex-military, and I'm proud to have worn the uniform, but I certainly was more of a drain on the taxpayer that I was a cog in the machine of the economy.

Oh i was never claiming it was good for the economy, i don't know where you got the idea that I was claiming that. But again what your talking about is seperate from the absolute size of the economy. Your talking about returns on investment which isn't even a consideration in wartime beyond the obvious national survival thing, (an incredibly nebulous thing to measure the value of anyway). There's no question that generally a war is bad for an economy once that economy starts running at an unsustainable size. You have to rob peter to pay paul to do that, and peter is going to demand interest on what was taken. But whilst ever you can rob peter to pay paul, paul can do a hell of a lot of work. The US on the other hand never really had to rob peter much to pay paul which meant post WW2 it was able to aim that industry at other things that did produce big returns on investment, the rest of the belligerent, not so much.

[Max_Killjoy]

Oh i was never claiming it was good for the economy, i don't know where you got the idea that I was claiming that. But again what your talking about is seperate from the absolute size of the economy. Your talking about returns on investment which isn't even a consideration in wartime beyond the obvious national survival thing, (an incredibly nebulous thing to measure the value of anyway). There's no question that generally a war is bad for an economy once that economy starts running at an unsustainable size. You have to rob peter to pay paul to do that, and peter is going to demand interest on what was taken. But whilst ever you can rob peter to pay paul, paul can do a hell of a lot of work. The US on the other hand never really had to rob peter much to pay paul which meant post WW2 it was able to aim that industry at other things that did produce big returns on investment, the rest of the belligerent, not so much.

The problem here is in measuring the size of an economy in ways that make it look "bigger" when it has just shifted focus to different measurables.

Additionally, there's the ongoing problem we have with the quality of an economy being judged by metrics of quantity and growth.

[Carl]

About to head out so this will have to be quick but:

What your complaining about is the equivalent of what goes on with renewable energy. People go on about how much we could generate, but few talk about the reliability of the availability of such energy. That doesn't make the people claiming it can generate stupendous amounts of energy wrong. it just means a true look at the situation requires all points be borne in mind.

I'm not trying to say those points are unimportant (as such). But this started out from commentary about how big a war economy as specifically when talking about that economy in terms of quantity of goods produced and what that means in terms of trade requirements to supply raw materials.

Also whilst i haven't touched on this before, that IS the fundamental difference between a war and peacetime economy.

A all out peacetime economies main goal is to provide the best possibble standard of living to that countries citizens for which there is an emphasis on growth potential and sustainability.

A all out wartime economies single overriding aim, is to ensure the continuity of that country as a nation state which places an emphasis on raw productivity and damn the growth or sustainability because if the country dosen;t survive none of that will matter.

Real world depending on circumstances the reality falls somwhere between those two extremes.

[Max_Killjoy]

About to head out so this will have to be quick but:

What your complaining about is the equivalent of what goes on with renewable energy. People go on about how much we could generate, but few talk about the reliability of the availability of such energy. That doesn't make the people claiming it can generate stupendous amounts of energy wrong. it just means a true look at the situation requires all points be borne in mind.

I'm not trying to say those points are unimportant (as such). But this started out from commentary about how big a war economy as specifically when talking about that economy in terms of quantity of goods produced and what that means in terms of trade requirements to supply raw materials.

Also whilst i haven't touched on this before, that IS the fundamental difference between a war and peacetime economy.

A all out peacetime economies main goal is to provide the best possible standard of living to that countries citizens for which there is an emphasis on growth potential and sustainability.

A all out wartime economies single overriding aim, is to ensure the continuity of that country as a nation state which places an emphasis on raw productivity and damn the growth or sustainability because if the country dosen;t survive none of that will matter.

Real world depending on circumstances the reality falls somwhere between those two extremes.


"An economy" doesn't have a goal. Like "culture" or "society", it's a convenient shorthand for the complex effects of countless interacting actors, rather than something that really exists as a distinct entity.

[Tiktakkat]

Mike_G and Max_Killjoy:

Exactly.


@Tiktakkat: I have no idea how you think i've been focusing on the US, most of my data dig has dug up stuff for germany and britain. Also i'm sorry but no, the US may have pushed it's economy hard but it's self evident in the data that they didn't push their economy very hard compared to what they could have done. The whole point me and max_killjoy have been having a bit of a byplay on is that true war economies stress themselves beyodn the point of sustainability. the US never did that as evidenced by the postwar situation.

So . . . Germany and Britain that couldn't maintain their wartime economies and suffered greatly in the post-war period prove that . . .
Well, certainly not that wartime economies are particularly good, no matter how big the numbers associated with them are.

Meanwhile, the U.S. suffered a post-war recession just like every other country after WWII, so I have no idea what data you think shows that it is self-evident that the U.S. did not strain its economy. The simple historical record is clear that the economy was very much strained, and showed those strains both during the war (with labor shortages and rationing) and after the war.


As for the rest, if your not going to measure an economy in terms of quantities or value of goods it's producing how do you measure? Ooops. You can't because those are the defining measures of the size and power of an economy. Your simply making nonsense up at this point to support your position as far as i'm concerned.

The value of goods matters based on how they are used. When those goods are simply being destroyed they become a drain on the economy, not an indicator of economic health or stability.
As for measuring value, how do you do that? By the amount of money the country says the goods cost? What happens when that country has runaway inflation? A billion dollars for a cup of coffee! The economy is booming! Hmmm . . .


Also again stop projecting US onto everyone else. US soldiers spent a lot of their wages abroad, everyone else not so much. Even german troops in Norway where returning to germany during leave.

Which is why Germany did so well during WWII.
Oh wait, it didn't.
But they made all those expensive weapons, so according to you, that means their economy was strong.


Oh i was never claiming it was good for the economy, i don't know where you got the idea that I was claiming that. But again what your talking about is seperate from the absolute size of the economy.

Where would someone get that idea?


As for the rest, if your not going to measure an economy in terms of quantities or value of goods it's producing how do you measure? Ooops. You can't because those are the defining measures of the size and power of an economy. Your simply making nonsense up at this point to support your position as far as i'm concerned.

So which is it?
Is it only about the size of the economy, or does the quality of the economy actually matter?


I'm not trying to say those points are unimportant (as such). But this started out from commentary about how big a war economy as specifically when talking about that economy in terms of quantity of goods produced and what that means in terms of trade requirements to supply raw materials.

IF, your wartime economy is only producing military goods that are sent off to be destroyed;
THEN, what are you using to trade for raw materials?

Hmmm . . .


No matter how you try and parse the definition, a war economy is not as big as you want to make it out to be. Producing goods for destruction may make the balance sheets look impressive, but in terms of function it is nothing but a drain.
As such, it is always a stress on the general economy, which is why a recession following the end of any war is an economic principle.
It takes very rare situations, as I have noted, for there to be any significant infrastructure expansion as a result of the war that can be taken advantage of once the immediate post-war recession has passed. (That includes the R&D effects that Mike_G noted.)
Economies simply do not work the way you want them to.

[Max_Killjoy]

Economies simply do not work the way you want them to.


To be fair, that's the way that media, politicians, and even some economists present economies as working.

We're repeatedly told to judge economies on quantity, on raw size and growth, based on ill-conceived abstracted metrics like GDP, raw tons or dollars of material goods, etc.

[WarKitty]

Not necessarily - Aztec macuahuitls and obsidian arrows were surprisingly effective against the steel equipped, gunpowder weapons and and horse riding conquistadors.

Keep in mind I'm allowing exotic materials like shark tooth or rhino horn as well. Doesn't have to be something easy to find or work, just technically possible.

[Vinyadan]

What about bulletproof glass armour? I don't know the details, but glass is an ancient material.

And ceramic arrows might function, although they would need special care during transportation, like having a quiver whose lower part is made of foam in which the heads are thrust. A dagger used for assassination might also be made out of ceramic or glass.

There are animals with absurdly hard skin, or incredibly thick (hard: crocs, elephants, rhinos; thick: sharks, sperm whales), which might be OK as armours.

I am wondering if it's possible to impregnate wood with a substance, maybe some resin, to make it harder to break.

[WarKitty]

What about bulletproof glass armour? I don't know the details, but glass is an ancient material.

And ceramic arrows might function, although they would need special care during transportation, like having a quiver whose lower part is made of foam in which the heads are thrust. A dagger used for assassination might also be made out of ceramic or glass.

There are animals with absurdly hard skin, or incredibly thick (hard: crocs, elephants, rhinos; thick: sharks, sperm whales), which might be OK as armours.

I am wondering if it's possible to impregnate wood with a substance, maybe some resin, to make it harder to break.

Well, I'm looking for a spear, rather than armor, so thick hide isn't going to help much. Although making it ceramic and handwaving some of the construction might be fun.

[Tiktakkat]

To be fair, that's the way that media, politicians, and even some economists present economies as working.

We're repeatedly told to judge economies on quantity, on raw size and growth, based on ill-conceived abstracted metrics like GDP, raw tons or dollars of material goods, etc.

Quite true.

And then someone comes along and points out that it doesn't matter how many PhD's you have working for how long with their precision tools and designer tableware, that mud pie is never going to be anything more than a clod of mud, and having 10 million of them isn't going to make you rich, even if you double all production next year.

[Deadmeat.GW]

Tiktakkat, was that remark about the German economy during the second world war a serious remark?

'Which is why Germany did so well during WWII.
Oh wait, it didn't.
But they made all those expensive weapons, so according to you, that means their economy was strong.'

[Khedrac]

What about bulletproof glass armour? I don't know the details, but glass is an ancient material.
Unfortunately 'bulletproof glass' isn't a glass, it's a complex polymer, i.e. a plastic.


There are animals with absurdly hard skin, or incredibly thick (hard: crocs, elephants, rhinos; thick: sharks, sperm whales), which might be OK as armours.
Yes to a point, the really tough skin is also really hard to work to turn into armour.
If you tan it to prevent decay that may also affect the toughness


I am wondering if it's possible to impregnate wood with a substance, maybe some resin, to make it harder to break.
Interesting idea. If it is just a resin it would stop it splintering and coming fully apart, but it probably would not stop it breaking. If it set like a glue it could be really effective - the wood giving shape to make a solid item from the glue. You probably want a very light wood so allow the maximum amount of glue to penetrate, e.g. balsa.

[Carl]

So which is it?
Is it only about the size of the economy, or does the quality of the economy actually matter?

Depends on what your trying to measure which is what i've been driving at for the last however many posts.

You're focused on what is the best economy. Which is a completely different thing to how big the economy is.

[VoxRationis]

In the Seven Years War, battles tended to have 20-50 thousand soldiers per side. Raids involving much smaller forces were very common, and there were a few cases where armies reached 60-80 thousand.

I see. And how big were independent tactical units at this time?

[Mike_G]

I see. And how big were independent tactical units at this time?

Depends what you mean.

A regiment is a pretty standard unit of the time. This is what gives the unit it's identity. The Black Watch was a regiment (42nd Highland Regiment of Foot.) A Regiment would be fairly homogeneous (Either Infantry, cabvalry, or Artillery, not a combined arms force) It's the unit that did the organizing, training, recruiting, etc. Many Regiments sent a Battalion to fight and kept a Battalion at home training.

A Battalion commonly had a paper strength of about 1000 men in ten 100 man companies, but it was never at paper strength. Probably closer to half that. This would be a common battlefield unit.

Companies often operated independently. More often outside of battles. Like a company might be sent to scout an area or garrison a fort. Again, this might be a hundred men in theory, but was probably really around fifty.

Smaller units might be used for specific tasks, but probably weren't really a maneuver unit on the battlefield. 17th Century warfare was not a squad and fire team level type of fighting like today.

Multiple Battalions of different Regiments could be combined to form Brigades, then Divisions, Corps and Armies in order of increasing size.

Large battles in Europe often involved armies of tens of thousands of men. Colonial battles were often much smaller in scale. Battles in Th French and Indian War on the American Revolution might have hundreds to a few thousand men on a side.

[Tiktakkat]

Tiktakkat, was that remark about the German economy during the second world war a serious remark?

No, that was sarcasm.
And clearly needed, as Carl still does not get it.


Depends on what your trying to measure which is what i've been driving at for the last however many posts.

You're focused on what is the best economy. Which is a completely different thing to how big the economy is.

Well no, I haven't.
I have focused on the difference between measuring raw size, measuring function in a war economy, assuming they are synonymous, and making projections about the consequences based purely on that size.

As such, quality is directly relevant to what you are trying to measure.
You could have a positively humongous agricultural economy, and it would be completely overshadowed by a moderate industrial economy when it came time for military mobilization. Like say, the way Russia was overwhelmed by Germany in WWI.

Meanwhile, what started this aspect of the discussion, is that you want to focus on a few indicators - coal use and steel production, and project that as making the entire economy more "massive".
That is just plain wrong.
If you said "in a wartime economy, steel production is more massive", then you might be correct. You didn't. You are using a number of limited data points, and projecting them through the entire economy.
And even on that, I already showed you that overall GDP growth in Germany during WWII was at most 20% above the pre-war level. That is hardly "massive" on an overall level, and profoundly less so when the amount produced just to be immediately destroyed along with the amount used to replace other losses are subtracted from the total.

[Carl]

At this point where going round and round in circles and i don't see us agreeing on this so rather than write out god knows how many more posts how about we just agree to disagree and let it go.

[Lemmy]

Were there any weapon meant to be used mostly two-handed (such as longsword) that had basket-style guards? Like a two-handed saber or something? Pretty much all swords I was able to find with that type of guard had no space for a second hand on the handle. I'm guessing that's because that kind of hilt was developed in a time when pistols were a thing.

[harlokin]

Were there any weapon meant to be used mostly two-handed (such as longsword) that had basket-style guards? Like a two-handed saber or something? Pretty much all swords I was able to find with that type of guard had no space for a second hand on the handle. I'm guessing that's because that kind of hilt was developed in a time when pistols were a thing.

Try looking up Swiss sabres, they are a two-handed sword with a developed hilt.

Can't think of any others, but it has nothing to do with pistols. It is possible that two-handed weapons were considered long enough that the hands weren't particularly vulnerable, or that a cross hilt was more effective for the style of combat.

[Lemmy]

Try looking up Swiss sabres, they are a two-handed sword with a developed hilt.

Can't think of any others, but it has nothing to do with pistols. It is possible that two-handed weapons were considered long enough that the hands weren't particularly vulnerable, or that a cross hilt was more effective for the style of combat.
Ah, thanks for the information... I assumed it had something to do with pistols because all I could find was one-handed weapons.

[Galloglaich]

Try looking up Swiss sabres, they are a two-handed sword with a developed hilt.

Can't think of any others, but it has nothing to do with pistols. It is possible that two-handed weapons were considered long enough that the hands weren't particularly vulnerable, or that a cross hilt was more effective for the style of combat.

There were plenty, Swiss sabers are a good place to start - but they made a lot of longswords that way too. Particularly swords made for town militia or town watch - the Swiss, Germans, and Czechs often made them with knucklebows and so on.

The problem was simply that the baskethilt or any complex hilt features below the cross (and even to some extent above the cross) can get in your way when fighting. When you are fighting with any two-handed (or 'hand-and-a-half') weapon, your grip is constantly shifting. If you have hilt features below the cross like a knucklebow, that can get in your way. Even above the cross can interfere with for example a thumbed grip which you use a lot in German longsword. I think with training and familiarity with the weapon this can be overcome, but even then you lose a little bit if your versatility (which is one of the greatest assets of a weapon like a longsword) but of course gain in hand protection which is very useful.

For swords a lot of the time you'll see things like this partial knucklebow:


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/19/e0/cf/19e0cf27db36117c820d44cef90ee669.jpg

Or the one you see here

http://www.swordforum.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=55082&stc=1&d=1154484298

Sometimes, particularly with Swiss swords (and I think even more specifically, for swords used by urban militia or town-watch) you'll see a full knucklebow like this

http://www.kp-art.fi/jt/miekat/img/swiss_kahva.jpg

There is another interesting variation of a partial kucklebow here on Myarmoury (you'll have to click the link they don't allow embedding)

http://pics.myarmoury.com/EBE_longswords01_s.jpg


Most often though, hand protection on longswords was limited to siderings and finger-rings or thumb rings, like here

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f3/78/7b/f3787bfebd5b2486a4cafe9e237f3bb7.jpg

I suspect this is simply because people liked to have that flexibility and didn't want to be distracted by a bar in their way, let alone a basket hilt.

The South-Asian Khanda, by the later period, had 'ferrengi' (foreign) influenced partial knucklebows, only for the top hand. The bottom hand gripped a kind of spike.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/63/3e/97/633e975c544cf22509c241941f5eb8a0.jpg


other two-handed weapons like maces and axes sometimes had some hand protection including knucklebows, but again that is typically restricted to single-handed use (or the off-hand could be used further up on the haft)

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/9d/ac/16/9dac16a0125338fd892e15e82ead8386.jpg


Hope that helps,

G

[Galloglaich]

I should add that in Medieval Europe, the alternative to complex hilts on two-handed weapons (which usually had little protection other than a roundel) was the use of gauntlets. This was advocated in many military manuals and other records of the period. Sometimes required for halberdiers or billmen for example.

Conversely, if you are wearing gauntlets the complex hilt features become partly redundant and doubly cumbersome. This is why town watch often had the longswords with complex hilts, because they often did their duty without armor on.

Complex hilt features above the cross like siderings, don't get in the way of gloves so much. I have a longsword feder with siderings and I quite like it especially for competitions - saves your hands. Then as now protective gloves can only help so much.

G

[PersonMan]

Questions - in a modern setting, in which both sides have limited weaponry (nothing that isn't man-portable, basically):

1. How long does it take for a defending group to gain a significant advantage over an attacker, in terms of 'prep time'? Assuming the are they're fighting in is more or less unknown to either force.
2. After how long does a small force, digging in with what they have available in an urban environment, 'cap out' in terms of benefits? At what point will it not matter how much additional time they have to get ready for the enemy?
3. In an urban environment, what would make a good effectively unassailable position? Something that could only be taken by a force overwhelmingly larger or with some kind of ace in the hole, like infiltration via unknown tunnels or similar.

[Storm Bringer]

Questions - in a modern setting, in which both sides have limited weaponry (nothing that isn't man-portable, basically):

1. How long does it take for a defending group to gain a significant advantage over an attacker, in terms of 'prep time'? Assuming the are they're fighting in is more or less unknown to either force.
2. After how long does a small force, digging in with what they have available in an urban environment, 'cap out' in terms of benefits? At what point will it not matter how much additional time they have to get ready for the enemy?
3. In an urban environment, what would make a good effectively unassailable position? Something that could only be taken by a force overwhelmingly larger or with some kind of ace in the hole, like infiltration via unknown tunnels or similar.

1) if they know roughly where the attackers are coming form, then even 5 minutes to look around, work out good sight lines and generally plan will make a difference.

2)with just the tools they have on hand, it really depends. you can keep doing things like digging trenches between buildings, or tearing down stuff to improve fire arcs, for days if you have the time. i'm not a expert at field fortifications, so I cant say where the line between "helpful" and "nice to have" is.

3)I think the answer to this either is "any solidly built building", based on the ww2 experience, or "none, assuming the attackers are willing to use all the modern firepower"

[Pauly]

Ah, thanks for the information... I assumed it had something to do with pistols because all I could find was one-handed weapons.

Galloglaich has covered all the important elements.

Just a few more points.
- Developed hilts started to be adopted prior to the development of the pistol, so he pistol is on the wrong timeline.
- The developed hilt seems to have started on civilian weapons, especially the 'nail' on German messers which over time became knucklebows and from then onto cage hilts, basket hilts et al.
- In military use the plate mail gauntlet was in use prior to the developed hilt so there was no military need to start using the developed hilts.
- At the time developed hilts came into existence the primary military hand to hand weapons were polearms - pikes, halberts, poleaxes et al. The sword was not an important military weapon, in that even though almost everybody carried one they were not expected to use them on the battlefield unless things turned pear shaped.
- Developed hilts are seen on sidearms. In military terms these are not the primary weapon of the soldier and these weapons were usually given to troops who needed a defensive weapon to fall back on. For officers their primary weapon is the command and control of their unit. The exception being cavalry where the sabre was often, but not always, the primary weapon.

Developed hilts came into existence to protect the hands of civilians in a civilian context.

[Gnoman]

Questions - in a modern setting, in which both sides have limited weaponry (nothing that isn't man-portable, basically):

1. How long does it take for a defending group to gain a significant advantage over an attacker, in terms of 'prep time'? Assuming the are they're fighting in is more or less unknown to either force.
2. After how long does a small force, digging in with what they have available in an urban environment, 'cap out' in terms of benefits? At what point will it not matter how much additional time they have to get ready for the enemy?
3. In an urban environment, what would make a good effectively unassailable position? Something that could only be taken by a force overwhelmingly larger or with some kind of ace in the hole, like infiltration via unknown tunnels or similar.

The details depend on how far we stretch the definition of "man-portable". If we decide to count pack howitzers and a few other heavy crew-served weapons (which cannot be readily carried by any one person, but are designed to be broken down into components that a man could manage) the situation changes a fair bit, but I don't think that's the spirit in which you meant it. I'm going to assume, therefore, that mortars, heavy machine guns, and RPGs are the top end.

1. Assuming an urban environment, zero minutes. Rubble, broken walls, and solidly built structures favor the defender purely by existing. Any extra prep time just makes the advantage larger.

2. Defenses can always be improved. Once you've sandbagged enough walls to protect your force, dug as many trenches as you can fill, sited in all your heavy weapons, and cleared as much kill zone as you can see (a day or so in an unfought area, a few hours in one that's been fought over a few times, as things are easier to work with), you can start setting up booby traps, fake defensive positions, fallback lines, etc. This is why the rule of attacking is to never, ever give the defenders time to do this if you can help it.

3. That depends on the country, and the specific region of the country. This will be easier to answer if we know what kind of setting you're emulating. In the abstract, any sturdy building will do quite well, and old fortifications still serve surprisingly well in modern warfare, at least if you don't have heavy artillery or air support.

[Beleriphon]

The details depend on how far we stretch the definition of "man-portable". If we decide to count pack howitzers and a few other heavy crew-served weapons (which cannot be readily carried by any one person, but are designed to be broken down into components that a man could manage) the situation changes a fair bit, but I don't think that's the spirit in which you meant it. I'm going to assume, therefore, that mortars, heavy machine guns, and RPGs are the top end.

I was going to say an 81-millimetre mortar is a three or four man weapon, but it is a portable unit, and can be absolutely devastating to infantry if used effectively.


1. Assuming an urban environment, zero minutes. Rubble, broken walls, and solidly built structures favor the defender purely by existing. Any extra prep time just makes the advantage larger.

Given the very real number of stories of soldiers defending what amounts to a one room hut with less then a half dozen men against vastly superior numbers, and being taken by surprise the answer is 0 seconds of prep time. I think this is your point, but it doesn't even have to be a particularly well constructed building.


2. Defenses can always be improved. Once you've sandbagged enough walls to protect your force, dug as many trenches as you can fill, sited in all your heavy weapons, and cleared as much kill zone as you can see (a day or so in an unfought area, a few hours in one that's been fought over a few times, as things are easier to work with), you can start setting up booby traps, fake defensive positions, fallback lines, etc. This is why the rule of attacking is to never, ever give the defenders time to do this if you can help it.

Depends on the building, defending the Castel Sant'Angelo is going require way less work than say the Colosseum. One is already a fortress that is designed to defend against attacker, while the other is a death trap for somebody if they get in the wrong spot. I'd hate to be the attack forced into the arena area while the defenders are in the seats. But at the same time it would be easy enough to get into the Colosseum from hundreds of entry points.


3. That depends on the country, and the specific region of the country. This will be easier to answer if we know what kind of setting you're emulating. In the abstract, any sturdy building will do quite well, and old fortifications still serve surprisingly well in modern warfare, at least if you don't have heavy artillery or air support.

I have to agree. It depends way to much on what kind of building and where it is located to give a real answer. A well built modern structure like a skyscraper is going to be a nightmare to attack, but then so would the Alamo. A mud hut on the other hand might be somewhat easier to effectively attack. I'm going to compare a few places in Canada since it has a nice ratio of old vs new construction. Kingston Penitentiary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Penitentiary) in Kingston Ontario Canada vs L'Anse aux Meadows (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows) the recreation of the original Viking settlement in Newfoundland. If we looked at two other structures the CN Tower (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CN_Tower) compared to Parliament Hill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Hill).

[VoxRationis]

How wide would a company of musket infantry deployed in line formation be? How thin would skirmishers spread themselves by comparison?

[Vinyadan]

Depends on the building, defending the Castel Sant'Angelo is going require way less work than say the Colosseum. One is already a fortress that is designed to defend against attacker, while the other is a death trap for somebody if they get in the wrong spot. I'd hate to be the attack forced into the arena area while the defenders are in the seats. But at the same time it would be easy enough to get into the Colosseum from hundreds of entry points.


Random history note, the Arena of Nimes, which is pretty much a smaller Colosseum (50,000 seats against 16,000) was actually fortified by a rebel Duke and used as a fort against one of the Gothic Kings of Spain, Wamba. Wamba won and a complex ceremony followed in which the king put his foot on the rebel's neck, and the Duke was sentenced to death by the other Dukes, after which the King possibly graced him (he surely didn't have him killed). The Arena of Arles instead was turned into a proper fortress with four towers and a city was carved into it, with the scene serving as central square.

The Colosseum also has underground tunnels, but I don't know much about them. They allowed animals to enter and the scene to be flooded for naval combat.

[Gnoman]

I was going to say an 81-millimetre mortar is a three or four man weapon, but it is a portable unit, and can be absolutely devastating to infantry if used effectively.




Hence why I called mortars the top end. You have one man carry the tube, one the baseplate, another the rest of the guts, and a fourth carries the bombs. I was excluding things like 75mm pack howitzers or automatic grenade launchers larger than an Mk 19.

[Beleriphon]

Random history note, the Arena of Nimes, which is pretty much a smaller Colosseum (50,000 seats against 16,000) was actually fortified by a rebel Duke and used as a fort against one of the Gothic Kings of Spain, Wamba. Wamba won and a complex ceremony followed in which the king put his foot on the rebel's neck, and the Duke was sentenced to death by the other Dukes, after which the King possibly graced him (he surely didn't have him killed). The Arena of Arles instead was turned into a proper fortress with four towers and a city was carved into it, with the scene serving as central square.

The Colosseum also has underground tunnels, but I don't know much about them. They allowed animals to enter and the scene to be flooded for naval combat.

It does, and that's why I'm saying a modern army would find it a relatively easy objective to assault, if only because there is no practical way to close off every entrance without a pretty substantial time sink. Never mind the fact the damn thing a big oval and is easily accessible from every side by design.

[Vinyadan]

Recently there was the Donetsk airport siege, which was the last area held by Kiev in Donetsk. Ukrainian soldiers there held on for months, in spite of tanks crashing into the building, until special forces climbed to the upper floors, placed charges, and made the ceilings fall on their heads. This was however a rather large number of men fighting there, in the hundreds.

[Storm Bringer]

How wide would a company of musket infantry deployed in line formation be? How thin would skirmishers spread themselves by comparison?

normally, infantry in line were packed in, the term used in some English manuals was the "touch of elbows", which gives a vivid idea of how close men were to each other. call it 3 feet per file. assuming a 100 man company in 3 ranks, it would occupy about 100feet of frontage.

of course, in a musket era army, a unit was lucky to be more than 60-75% of its "paper" strength, so its more like 50-60 feet per company.

a skirmish line, by contrast, was normally more like 5-10 feet between files, so one company of light infantry could mostly cover its parent battalion of line infantry (the standard practice was to augment the light companies with dedicated skirmisher battalions, such the British rifles, or the French chasseurs a plied)

its important to note that skirmish lines could only operate with the back up of a formed line of infantry, to fall back on when threatened by cavalry. this formed line, when the light infantry was operating to far form other units to rally on them, was normally 50% of the total strength.

[Mike_G]

How wide would a company of musket infantry deployed in line formation be? How thin would skirmishers spread themselves by comparison?

Musket infantry encompasses a huge span of time.

If you mean 18th Century infantry armed with flintlock muskets and bayonets, not pike and musket units from earlier, the line would be three men deep (later two) and as wide as the number allowed. So 30 men wide if there were 90 in the firing line which would be about paper strength, 15 men wide if there were 45 which is about what most companies fielded. Men in line stood pretty much shoulder to shoulder, so figure a yard of space per man. That way they are easy to control, and present a solid wall of bayonets to an enemy charge.

Skirmishers would leave five or so yards between men, which reduces vulnerability to artillery and musketry, but makes them harder to control and easy for cavalry to sweep away.

But over time the units tended to get thinner, going from very deep in the height of the Renaissance to two deep in the American Civil war. As rifles and cannon got better, formations got looser, skirmishing became more common. Although colonial troops fought in close order with breechloaders when facing enemy like the Zulu or Mahdists who had few firearms or artillery.

That's all really general though. Fusilier could probably give much more detail than I.

[snowblizz]

It does, and that's why I'm saying a modern army would find it a relatively easy objective to assault, if only because there is no practical way to close off every entrance without a pretty substantial time sink. Never mind the fact the damn thing a big oval and is easily accessible from every side by design.

The Colosseum was used as a castle by the Frangipani family in the 1200s.

Despite how it looks, there are limited entry ways in to the actual middle of the building and access is by very narrow stairways and parts of it has no access to others. Senators and commoners owuld not come into contanct when entering or leaving. The more nemerous common seating was higher up too which means have to work your way up narrow stairs to get out into the arena space proper.

[fusilier]

How wide would a company of musket infantry deployed in line formation be? How thin would skirmishers spread themselves by comparison?

It's amazing how much more frontage skirmishers take up -- whenever I have a decent sized unit go from two ranks to skirmish, I've always got to plan on having a lot of room.

As others have said you're going to have to be more specific about how big the company is. (They can range from around 30 or so, to over 200 men depending upon time and place). Also if they are deployed in two or three ranks. That said, there should be a rough estimate for how much space a single man takes up, when standing shoulder-to-shoulder (18-20inches?). From there the calculation would be simple.

In the American Civil War the standard distance between skirmishers was 5 paces (about 12 feet), but that could varied by the commander, according to needs and the terrain. It's another factor that varied over time too.

[Martin Greywolf]

For lower margin width estimates, you can look at pre-gunpowder formations. A melee fighter in a tight formation needs at the very least 0.9 m of width (this is about the width of a Roman shield), at this point, soldiers are standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder. Give them any less space, and their ability to move and fight will be hampered (this happens when a charge hits, for example, if you are where it hit, you'll just have to brace and hope everyone else is braced too, not much weapon swinging can be done).

Skirmishers need at least twice that, though it depends on what skirmishers they are. Archers massed up to shoot aren't expecting any running and can make do with about 1.5-2 meters (and that is mostly to allow front two ranks to shoot directly ahead), javelin-throwers will need more (ballpark 3 meters plus, but I'm not sure, I wasn't in any battles with javelin throwers) because they tend to move fast and need the space to slow down and stop.

For the metric impaired, 1 meter is 3+1/3 feet.

[JustSomeGuy]

From galloglaich's post back a page:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f3/78/7b/f3787bfebd5b2486a4cafe9e237f3bb7.jpg


That looks like an awfully thin section to hold a sword with in full combat, was that as unusual as it appears?

[Max_Killjoy]

From galloglaich's post back a page:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f3/78/7b/f3787bfebd5b2486a4cafe9e237f3bb7.jpg


That looks like an awfully thin section to hold a sword with in full combat, was that as unusual as it appears?


Most likely a museum piece, missing some bits.

[PersonMan]

With older swords, keep in mind that material other than metal doesn't last as long - so you're effectively seeing the "skeleton" of a sword, rather than the whole thing.

[snowblizz]

From galloglaich's post back a page:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f3/78/7b/f3787bfebd5b2486a4cafe9e237f3bb7.jpg


That looks like an awfully thin section to hold a sword with in full combat, was that as unusual as it appears?

It's missing the none metal parts though. That's the tang only showing. would covered in wood and other materials for a grip.

[Vinyadan]

With older swords, keep in mind that material other than metal doesn't last as long - so you're effectively seeing the "skeleton" of a sword, rather than the whole thing.

BTW, this doesn't need much time to happen. Billhooks whose grip is covered in leather or cork will need these pieces replaced after a while.

[Carl]

For the metric impaired, 1 meter is 3+1/3 feet.

3 feet 4 inches if you prefer.

[fusilier]

3 feet 4 inches if you prefer.

It's actually closer to 39 inches, or 3'3", or 3 and 1/4 feet. Although we're starting to split hairs a bit, that's the conversion I typically use.

[Carl]

Be fair most laymen use 25mm to an inch, even though it's 25.4. I just know some people prefer to work fractions of a foot in specific inches rather than fractions.

[fusilier]

Be fair most laymen use 25mm to an inch, even though it's 25.4. I just know some people prefer to work fractions of a foot in specific inches rather than fractions.

Fair enough, when I deal with inches that's what I usually use -- but cloth is measured in yards and meters, and I do have to do that conversion from time to time. ;-)

[Carl]

Odd question, strictly from the question of dealing damage how effective would a sword/war axe/mace/e.t.c. (single and/or double handed), be at killing somthing like a polar bear, or other large but not supermassive, (like elephant,s rhino's, hippopotamus, e.t.c.), animals? TBh i'm looking for a comparison for somthing i'm writing in terms of approximate toughness but not sure if somthing like a polar bear, (which are known to be hard to put down wit simple bullets), would be as comparatively hard to hurt with traditional melee instruments.

[Mr Beer]

A spear would be a much better weapon against a large predator. It can penetrate thick fur and muscle to reach vital organs, has good reach and can keep the animal at bay.

A mace would be my last choice. I'm not skilled, so I guess out of the choices offered I'd take a two-handed axe but yeah I wouldn't be thrilled about taking on a large bear with any melee weapon. If I knew what I was doing, probably a two handed sword. A lucky thrust could probably fell even a large bear and the cut is devastating enough to slice through fur and muscle, maybe even some bone.

[Martin Greywolf]

What I'm going to say here is taken from several articles by people who re-enact medieval hunts by chasing boars with spears and swords and killing them. Yes, they are considerably more metal than pretty much anyone.

With a large animal, your problem isn't to inflict a killing wound - you can do that with a dagger. It's staying alive long enough to enjoy your kill. Ranged weapons solve this by being ranged, killing the animal reasonably quickly (that is, inside of 5-10 seconds ideally) and having the ability to repeat their shots (either repeating weapon like a bow or semiauto rifle, or simply bringing many dudes with crossbows, ideally both).

With melee, a boar, let alone a bear, needs about half a second to inflict some serious wounds on you. Your priority therefore moves to being able to manipulate the animal. This is achieved by inserting a pointy stick into said animal, bracing it against a bone and using it as a lever. One guy with a sword can stab a boar behind his shoulderblade and use the sword (or spear) as a lever to make the boar not face him.

Somewhat safer is the boar spear, that is a spear that has a large crossguard that stops the spear from going too far in, but still far enough that you have a leverage. This doesn't help that much with the leverage I described above, but does wonders from stopping a charging boar which impales itself on the spear from goring your bollocks off. So, added utility, you don't have to sneak up on the boar now.

With polar bear, you would use the same tactics, but need more people. While a boar weights about twice as much as a guy, polar bear can be ten times a dude's weight. Surround it with many people, stab it and use the leverage to keep it from charging in the first place. If not possible, form a pike wall against it with boar spears, one spear may well break from the impact, three or four may withstand it.

That said, it is possible to kill a bear one on one with a sword, just incredibly dangerous. Aim for his vital spots, or for spots that are painful for him to stop him from going near the small, hairless monkey with the painstick. If it decides to rush you, though, you're kinda boned. There's a nice account of a knight saving a life of a Hungarian king from a bear in just this way after the king's horse dragged its rider along after his foot got stuck in a stirrup. The chronicler was super enraged that the jealous courtiers stopped the knight from being rewarded properly.

As for blunt trauma weapons, bad idea. Not only do you not have the leverage (unless it's a pollaxe, but why not use the axe part then?), you also have the problem that blunt trauma works on humans thanks to dazing us, which gets a lot less effective as the target increases in size.

For one handed vs two handed, use two handed, ideally pole weapons. One handed weapon has the chief advantages of allowing off hand use (for shields or grappling, both almost useless against a bear) and being compact (okay, this one may come into a play if bear attacks you while travelling, but not when you're actually hunting it on purpose, "loaded for bear" is an idiom for a reason) - those will not help all that much here.

[Vinyadan]

Odd question, strictly from the question of dealing damage how effective would a sword/war axe/mace/e.t.c. (single and/or double handed), be at killing somthing like a polar bear, or other large but not supermassive, (like elephant,s rhino's, hippopotamus, e.t.c.), animals? TBh i'm looking for a comparison for somthing i'm writing in terms of approximate toughness but not sure if somthing like a polar bear, (which are known to be hard to put down wit simple bullets), would be as comparatively hard to hurt with traditional melee instruments.

Hunting manuals said very clearly that only spears could be used in melee against a bear. Any other (shorter) option would have caused loss of human lives.

As for "damaging" the bear, assuming a paralysed bear, I would still expect the bear to resist slashes better than a human because of its fur and fat, and blunt trauma because bears occasionally fight each other. A spear would allow you to thrust, and to put the most force in the thrust, so I'd go with the spear.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/__data/assets/image/0003/185115/2006bf7014_full_boar_and_bear_hunt_tapestry.jpg

In the centre you can see a man killing a bear with a sword. The bear is killing a dog, and the man goes in on point.

[Martin Greywolf]

In the centre you can see a man killing a bear with a sword. The bear is killing a dog, and the man goes in on point.

More interestingly, he halfswords, which is something recommended by Fiore against opponents who want to rush you to get inside your reach, and is universally used against armored opponents. I suppose a bear counts as both.

[WarKitty]

What's the closest real-world equivalent(s) to the D&D longspear (a melee spear with about a 10 foot reach)?

[Knaight]

What's the closest real-world equivalent(s) to the D&D longspear (a melee spear with about a 10 foot reach)?

That would be a spear, particularly as 10 feet of reach in D&D doesn't mean a 10 foot weapon, and 8' spears were pretty common. If a 10' weapon is needed, there's pikes of that length.

[WarKitty]

That would be a spear, particularly as 10 feet of reach in D&D doesn't mean a 10 foot weapon, and 8' spears were pretty common. If a 10' weapon is needed, there's pikes of that length.

I kinda figured a length of less than 10 feet would be fine. Just wondering if there was any particular weapon or type of spear that would correspond and be distinct from smaller throwing spears, or if they're all just called "spear".

[Carl]

Achhh sounds like i should have worded my question better, i was heading off to bed when i posted it. I'm not really asking about how practical it would be to hunt such creatures with those weapons. Rather i've got a magical being thats fairly big compared to a human and by virtue of being magical even tougher than the sheer size suggests, whilst i can and am going to try to provide descriptions of the kinds of effects various weaponry will have i'd like a handy touchstone for laymen's terms of a real creature that would be about as resistant generally speaking.

If you want a quick writeup of generalities feel free to ask.

[Storm Bringer]

I kinda figured a length of less than 10 feet would be fine. Just wondering if there was any particular weapon or type of spear that would correspond and be distinct from smaller throwing spears, or if they're all just called "spear".

thiers a few historical names like "hasta" "doru/dory" and such, but they are all pretty much just the local word for "spear", as the 8-9 foot thrusting spear was pretty much the standard weapon for most ancient warriors.

[Mr Beer]

Achhh sounds like i should have worded my question better, i was heading off to bed when i posted it. I'm not really asking about how practical it would be to hunt such creatures with those weapons. Rather i've got a magical being thats fairly big compared to a human and by virtue of being magical even tougher than the sheer size suggests, whilst i can and am going to try to provide descriptions of the kinds of effects various weaponry will have i'd like a handy touchstone for laymen's terms of a real creature that would be about as resistant generally speaking.

If you want a quick writeup of generalities feel free to ask.

Then you can go with Piercing > Slashing > Crushing as that's kind of how it works with large creatures. That's partially because you need to get in deep to reach vital areas, but partially because spears are the best kind of melee weapons if you're going to fight something like that as explained above.

[rrgg]

I believe sometimes Greek heroes were described wielding a extremely long spear because of their strength.

If you want to go by George Silver's categories, a 10 foot spear is sort of in an awkward place. Silver's "perfect length" for a polearm was usually about 8 or 9 feet long, depending on the user's stature. Beyond this length he claims that certain wards and strikes become too awkward to use, so I guess a 10 foot spear might be considered to behave more like a pike, only shorter.

[rrgg]

Then you can go with Piercing > Slashing > Crushing as that's kind of how it works with large creatures. That's partially because you need to get in deep to reach vital areas, but partially because spears are the best kind of melee weapons if you're going to fight something like that as explained above.

Well, thrusting is good if you can strike the heart or other vital locations. And thrusts to other organs are likely to kill something eventually. Ideally you'd want to thrust with a relatively broad, leaf bladed weapon to cut as much muscle and as many arteries as you can going in. A cut, assuming its strong enough to go pretty deep through muscle or possibly even sever a limb, might cripple quicker than a thrust. In general swinging a weapon tends to generate far more energy than thrusting one. Crushing might not be that useful unless you get a really strong blow into the skull, or unless the creature has magically tough skin like hercules' lion.

On the subject of hunting weapons, the "hanger" sword was supposedly originally designed for finishing off wounded animals while hunting.

[WarKitty]

I believe sometimes Greek heroes were described wielding a extremely long spear because of their strength.

If you want to go by George Silver's categories, a 10 foot spear is sort of in an awkward place. Silver's "perfect length" for a polearm was usually about 8 or 9 feet long, depending on the user's stature. Beyond this length he claims that certain wards and strikes become too awkward to use, so I guess a 10 foot spear might be considered to behave more like a pike, only shorter.

To be fair, I'm talking about a spear that can strike someone 10 feet away, not a 10-foot long spear.

[snowblizz]

I kinda figured a length of less than 10 feet would be fine. Just wondering if there was any particular weapon or type of spear that would correspond
No a spear is a spear basically. As mentioned other names are sometimes used but those are usually a local version of "spear". Sometimes this spear is somewhat distinct and the local name is used instead.




and be distinct from smaller throwing spears, or if they're all just called "spear".
Well those are normally termed javelins, in English (other languages have their own names for the smaller-throwing-spear), which is just an old diminitutive for spear borrowed from French.


You'll find the same problem with "sword" really. It's mostly only us modern folks needing to categorize and differentiate between stuff that run into this problem.

[Martin Greywolf]

Spear terminology is pretty simple - it's always spear. Not that there aren't significant variations in what they look like, but those are, at most, dealt with by descriptive adjectives, so a long spear is perfectly fine, it's just a spear that is longer than usual in a given place (that may be a 3-foot spear for Zulus, or a 12-foot spear for medieval Europe). Even then, this is sometimes not done, Maciejowski bible shows spears that range from 1.8 to 2.5 meters (approx 6 to 8 feet), calculated from average male height.

Once you start attaching fiddly bits to the spear, then a name changes - winged spear, boar spear, sudlice, billhook, halberd, the list goes on. Some of these handle like spears, others less so.

Another option to differentiate spears is to use terms that describe their use, so you get hunting spear or duelling spear.

As for actual reach, I can get about 2 extra feet (60 cm) out of a spear at the full extension of my normal thrust, and an extra foot on top of that when I'm lancing, but I tend to leave half a foot (15-20 cm) of a spear sticking out behind my rear hand, so an 8-foot spear would have 9.5 foot normal reach (and 10.5 lancing reach), if we ignore footwork. How that translates to threatened squares is anybody's guess.

[Carl]

I definitely need to work up that description, but before i post that i'll just re-emphasize somthing i may not have gotten across properly allready. Age old "i know what i mean but am i communicating this properly" problem.

What i'm really looking for is an idea of the kind of damage the kind of weapons i mentioned, (or somthing like a pole axe or halberd or whatever you prefer), would do to the sort of targets i mentioned. Not what would be most effective. As you'll see i've got a fairly clear idea of the kind of effect i want the various weapons to have on my creature of choice, but i'm looking for somthing that, (within the proviso of being more resistant to shock and blood loss than any real creature is going to be), is going to be about as hard to hurt generally. So the laymen who can't be bothered or just dosen't have the knowledge framework to work fully through the survivability implications of the descriptions of weapon effects can go "yeah that tough". Also note it's a strictly fluff, (lore in ye olden terms), description, not a rules thingy.




Satyr's are amongst the largest and most physically imposing of Fey types. They resemble typical descriptions most respects with the legs of a goat and the body of a man covered in light fur, however they lack any trace of the horns normally ascribed to them. Standing at between 7 and 8 feet normally they are large by human standards, and even broader and thicker of body and limb than even their formidable height suggests... *a large amount of "place in the fey hierarchy", stuff will go here, so i'll skip it as unnecessary* ...As can be expected their sheer physical size makes killing them in battle a particular problem as damage in scale that would be lethal to a human from sheer mass trauma is much less massive to a satyr and thus inherently more survivable. Their thick animal like hides add to this, whilst not remotely on par with true armour they are thick enough to add additional impediment to attempt to harm them with the full range of melee weaponry. Worse still however they are magical beings with the inherent levels of improved durability against physical and magical attacks. As noted satyr's are on the lower end here with no outright magic of their own beyond their nature. Nonetheless severing limbs or outright slicing them in half as can be achieved with varying degrees of success, depending on weapon and technique, against a human target is unlikely as are penetrating thrusts that could pass straight through the torso without considerable momentum beyond what could be achieved by a human on foot or similar. Nonetheless cutting blows that can deeply lacerate muscle and tendons in limbs, even down to the bone with the possibility of some gouging of the bone are possible. If the ribs and sternum are avoided blows to the central torso to depths of around or slight in excess of a half a foot or so are also entirely possibble. As is typical of all magical beings they are also sufficiently resistant to organ damage outside of the heart and brain and to blood loss and shock that neither will prove fatal with sufficient speed in a fight. As such outside of sufficiently damaging blows to aforementioned brain and heart it requires mass tissue and organ damage to the central trunk to be lethal. Equally their general bone thickness and magical nature means that whilst lighter crushing injury weapons may bruise and fracture bones and heavy blows may break bones, however it will take repeated blows to outright crush bones or inflict large scale blunt force traume to soft tissue and organs. Leaving aside obviously the points about resistance to blood loss and organ damage they are roughly equivalent to an X.



It's basically that ending X i'm looking to fill in.

[Coidzor]

What sort of things have actually been used to poison/contaminate water supplies that we're aware of?

Do we know how far back the practice of deliberately doing so goes?

[Mr Beer]

What sort of things have actually been used to poison/contaminate water supplies that we're aware of?

Do we know how far back the practice of deliberately doing so goes?

Corpses and certainly as far back as we've had both wells and warfare; probably longer.

[Berenger]

Besides corpses (or, even better, disease-ridden corpses), feces should work (again, feces of sick people may work even better than regular feces). As for the "how far back", I'd be surprised if Mr Beer wasn't right.

[snowblizz]

There's a story from Ancient Greece about a siege where they put a bunch of poisonous herbs in the river flowing to a city under siege.

Wish I could recall more details at the moment.

[Vinyadan]

Right now the earliest example I can think of was when Belisar wanted to poison the water sources in Ravenna, which was in the VI century, but I am sure you can find earlier occurrences.

[Galloglaich]

From galloglaich's post back a page:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f3/78/7b/f3787bfebd5b2486a4cafe9e237f3bb7.jpg


That looks like an awfully thin section to hold a sword with in full combat, was that as unusual as it appears?

That is just the tang, the iron part of the hilt - it would have a wooden hilt over it plus maybe some shark skin or leather or something. The width comes from the wood though (the strength of course, from the tang)

That said you could probably fight with it just like that thought it might be a bit uncomfortable.

G

[Galloglaich]

What I'm going to say here is taken from several articles by people who re-enact medieval hunts by chasing boars with spears and swords and killing them. Yes, they are considerably more metal than pretty much anyone.

With a large animal, your problem isn't to inflict a killing wound - you can do that with a dagger. It's staying alive long enough to enjoy your kill. Ranged weapons solve this by being ranged, killing the animal reasonably quickly (that is, inside of 5-10 seconds ideally) and having the ability to repeat their shots (either repeating weapon like a bow or semiauto rifle, or simply bringing many dudes with crossbows, ideally both).

With melee, a boar, let alone a bear, needs about half a second to inflict some serious wounds on you. Your priority therefore moves to being able to manipulate the animal. This is achieved by inserting a pointy stick into said animal, bracing it against a bone and using it as a lever. One guy with a sword can stab a boar behind his shoulderblade and use the sword (or spear) as a lever to make the boar not face him.

Somewhat safer is the boar spear, that is a spear that has a large crossguard that stops the spear from going too far in, but still far enough that you have a leverage. This doesn't help that much with the leverage I described above, but does wonders from stopping a charging boar which impales itself on the spear from goring your bollocks off. So, added utility, you don't have to sneak up on the boar now.

With polar bear, you would use the same tactics, but need more people. While a boar weights about twice as much as a guy, polar bear can be ten times a dude's weight. Surround it with many people, stab it and use the leverage to keep it from charging in the first place. If not possible, form a pike wall against it with boar spears, one spear may well break from the impact, three or four may withstand it.

That said, it is possible to kill a bear one on one with a sword, just incredibly dangerous. Aim for his vital spots, or for spots that are painful for him to stop him from going near the small, hairless monkey with the painstick. If it decides to rush you, though, you're kinda boned. There's a nice account of a knight saving a life of a Hungarian king from a bear in just this way after the king's horse dragged its rider along after his foot got stuck in a stirrup. The chronicler was super enraged that the jealous courtiers stopped the knight from being rewarded properly.

As for blunt trauma weapons, bad idea. Not only do you not have the leverage (unless it's a pollaxe, but why not use the axe part then?), you also have the problem that blunt trauma works on humans thanks to dazing us, which gets a lot less effective as the target increases in size.

For one handed vs two handed, use two handed, ideally pole weapons. One handed weapon has the chief advantages of allowing off hand use (for shields or grappling, both almost useless against a bear) and being compact (okay, this one may come into a play if bear attacks you while travelling, but not when you're actually hunting it on purpose, "loaded for bear" is an idiom for a reason) - those will not help all that much here.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Die-Hirschjagd-1540.jpg

I think this hunting scene from 1540 is pretty illustrative of the reality of a hunt, including fighting with dangerous animals using the tools of the day.

In the upper left corner you can se a bear wreaking havoc on some hunters and a bunch of hunting dogs. One hunter is down, maybe dead, one dog is down, another one is in the grip of the bear and in the process of being torn apart. A mounted hunter in the upper left, probably a VIP, has a crossbow that he looks like he is spanning, he probably already took a shot at the bear. Footmen with spears and one lancer are attacking the bear as are several dogs.

The spears are those typical 'boars spear' types with a big blade and a crossbar.


In the upper right you can see some large boars being flushed out and similarly wreaking havoc, with a least one dog down. The beasts are similarly beset by spearmen and dogs, as are the stags and other prestige game in the center, with the VIP's mostly along the bottom safer on the other side of the river, armed with crossbows.

Medieval (and Early Modern) hunts were intentionally done this way to enhance the danger. The animals would be flushed out into a massive 'kill zone' by beaters and dogs, and then shot with crossbows and guns and finished off by spearmen and horsemen (armed with lances and swords) as well as different types of dogs trained to kill.

This is a similar scene in a stag hunt, where you can see marksmen on the safe side of the river and the prey animals emerging into a kill zone, with cavalry and dogs among them to finish them off.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/Lucas_Cranach_the_Elder_Stag_Hunt.jpg/800px-Lucas_Cranach_the_Elder_Stag_Hunt.jpg



These scenes give you a good idea of the peril associated with these hunts. Certain animals like bears, (especially brown bears or polar bears) lions, aurochs, wisent, boars and wolves, and even large deer and elk routinely killed hunters during hunting expeditions, which I believe were intentionally conducted in a manner similar to a military operation, as a form of training.

in Poland they used to hunt bears on foot with a spear with a stout crossbar, stab the bear and "prop it" against the ground, and let the bear wear itself out pushing at the spear. Obviously risky! They also used to dismount and finish off boar with special 'boars swords' or knives. You can certainly kill even a large bear with a decent sized knife - so long as it is distracted by dogs or you are strait up killer (apparently Cesare Borgia used to decapitate charging boars on foot with one sword stroke, to intimidate people he took hunting with him). Hunters carried big 'bowie knife' type blades, I think for butchering, such as you can see here in this detail of chamois hunters from the Triumph of Maximilian,

http://mailmaker.tripod.com/climbing/chamoiss.jpg

...as well as messers, swords, axes and other sidearms.

There is another similar marvelous painting of a hunting scene (I don't know who painted this or where or when, if anyone does please let me know), where you can see one of the VIP's on horseback in the center, on the safe side of the river flanked by two halberdiers. I would imagine those halberdiers are there to quickly "handle up" on any dangerous game animals like a bear or even an enraged stag that might threaten the VIP. A halberd would be a pretty devastating weapon against a bear I suspect.

http://www.codexmartialis.com/download/file.php?id=143

G

[Galloglaich]

What sort of things have actually been used to poison/contaminate water supplies that we're aware of?

Do we know how far back the practice of deliberately doing so goes?

I suspect it goes way back.

There is a very chilling account by the Polish chronicler Jan Dlugosz of the massive poisoning of multiple water supplies (springs, creeks, wells and rivers) by the Mongols in the 14th or 15th Century, after they were militarily defeated in Ukraine and forced to retreat. If I can find it later I'll transcribe it and post here. He said thousands of people were killed before they figured out what was going on.

Jan Dlugosz attributed it to 'magic' and said that they had put some kind of severed heads on posts at the sites of the poisoning, but 'magic' would include things like poison or biological warfare. The Mongols seemed to use techniques like that a lot.

I remember there was an article a while back of a siege tunnel they had dug up in Syria or somewhere, in which I think Assyrian or Roman soldiers (I can't remember the details) had used chemicals to create poison gas in the siege tunnel, from way back in the BC time period. I wish I could be more specific but somebody else can find and post it

G