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

[snowblizz]

My understanding of the armour industry of the period was that the best quality armour* in Europe was produced around Augsburg in South Germany and Milan in Northern Italy, which both had distinct styles of their own. Undoubtedly English knights at the time would want to wear the most protective armour they could afford.

Therefore my question is this:
Did England have it's own domestic armour production during the first half of the 15th century capable of creating high-quality tempered steel plate comparable to Augsburg and Milan, or did armourers in the latter two centres make armour to specifications, and in a style ordered by English knights?

To me the latter seems most likely, which would suggest that England had armourers who could design a harness, but couldn't manufacture the best quality plates to best utilise the design? Is a combination possible? That plates were ordered, but only assembled into a full harness once they arrived in England, similar to sword blades being fitted with a hilt on arrival at their destination.

All of the above. I think when they speak of an English style armour they mean the Grenwich made ones.

Greenwich (sp?) armours are a thing, though it only was founded in 1511. Yes Augsburg and Milan were the most famous centres but that doesn't preclude other places from making equally good or better armours. Augsburg and Milan made huge numbers though, to the best of quality the age would allow for (or the worst if that's how your fancy lay), which is why they are famous. Not because only they were capable of making the quality plates. Masters would be tempted away with lucrative contracts
all the time am sure, which is how Henry 8 started his armoury.

[Haighus]

All of the above. I think when they speak of an English style armour they mean the Grenwich made ones.

Greenwich (sp?) armours are a thing, though it only was founded in 1511. Yes Augsburg and Milan were the most famous centres but that doesn't preclude other places from making equally good or better armours. Augsburg and Milan made huge numbers though, to the best of quality the age would allow for (or the worst if that's how your fancy lay), which is why they are famous. Not because only they were capable of making the quality plates. Masters would be tempted away with lucrative contracts
all the time am sure, which is how Henry 8 started his armoury.
I am specifically referring to the 15th century, prior to the Greenwich armoury being founded. There was an English style before the Greenwich armoury which focussed on design elements for foot combat over mounted combat, and had some aesthetic differences to typical continental harnesses.

In the videos, Dr Capwell talks extensively about how distinctly English the armour portrayed in the effigy was, and I was basically wondering where this stuff was made.

Masters relocated to England would make sense, as would contracted specifications.

[Seharvepernfan]

I know it's fake, but what are these called?

http://i63.tinypic.com/14aybk2.jpg

[Haighus]

I know it's fake, but what are these called?

http://i63.tinypic.com/14aybk2.jpg
Do you mean the type of sword represented, or the type of practice sword? The shape is of a falchion. I don't know what type of replica it is.

[Storm Bringer]

id call it a falchion, or messer. the image may be of a fake weapon, but the design is authentic enough. similar weapons were common enough, certainly.

[Haighus]

It appears to have a sword-style hilt, so I would say a falchion over a messer.

[Seharvepernfan]

I figured it would be too thin and light to be a falchion.

[Haighus]

I figured it would be too thin and light to be a falchion.

On average, falchions don't weigh more than any other single-handed sword of the same era. The typical falchion (type 1a, see below) has a very thin cross section to make up for the large width.

Here is the full range of falchion/messer blades (the difference is in the hilt). These all weigh about the same on average, single-handed sword weights are remarkable similar throughout the medieval period and beyond- generally between 1 and 3 pounds.

I'd say your sword above is a type 5a falchion with 0 curvature.

https://pre00.deviantart.net/b81f/th/pre/f/2016/232/7/2/elmslie_typology_of_single_edged_medieval_swords_b y_shad_brooks-daenytz.jpg

[Kiero]

In the story I'm reading at the moment, futuristic types are stranded on a lower-tech world, which is militarily at the level of the Age of Pike and Shot. One of their earliest actions when they gain the confidence of some local forces, is to basically upgrade them to Napoleonic levels (rifled muskets with ring-socket bayonets in place of the smoothbores with plug bayonets they had).

Are there any historical examples of a Napoleonic-style army coming up against one still using pikes?

[Vinyadan]

The Americans used pikes against the British, but that was before Napoleon :smallcool:

Otherwise:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Rebellion_of_1798

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

saw one side using large quantities of pikes.

[Storm Bringer]

In the story I'm reading at the moment, futuristic types are stranded on a lower-tech world, which is militarily at the level of the Age of Pike and Shot. One of their earliest actions when they gain the confidence of some local forces, is to basically upgrade them to Napoleonic levels (rifled muskets with ring-socket bayonets in place of the smoothbores with plug bayonets they had).

Are there any historical examples of a Napoleonic-style army coming up against one still using pikes?


Heirs of Empire, by David Weber? good book, enjoyed it.


to answer the question, not really. i think a theirs a few examples of Russian conscripts being given "pikes" that were only 8 foot long, during the 1812 invasion, but i cant think of any real examples of it happening. the time gap is just too great.


its like the british redcoats trying to invade Zululand, and being met with the modern South African Defense force.

[Kiero]

The Americans used pikes against the British, but that was before Napoleon :smallcool:

Otherwise:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Rebellion_of_1798

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

saw one side using large quantities of pikes.

I don't mean it has to be an army from the time of Napoleon, merely that they'd moved on to socketed bayonets and no longer used pikes. Apparently the French army made the socket bayonet standard issue in 1703 - so anything from that time onwards where an army that no longer "needs" pikes faces one which still uses them.


Heirs of Empire, by David Weber? good book, enjoyed it.


to answer the question, not really. i think a theirs a few examples of Russian conscripts being given "pikes" that were only 8 foot long, during the 1812 invasion, but i cant think of any real examples of it happening. the time gap is just too great.


its like the british redcoats trying to invade Zululand, and being met with the modern South African Defense force.

Yep, Heirs of Empire.

Indeed, all the examples of "pikes" (which includes those Vinyadan references) always seem to be poorly-equipped peasant/conscript forces who have nothing else, rather than militaries that choose to fight with pikemen and musketeers.

[snowblizz]

In the story I'm reading at the moment, futuristic types are stranded on a lower-tech world, which is militarily at the level of the Age of Pike and Shot. One of their earliest actions when they gain the confidence of some local forces, is to basically upgrade them to Napoleonic levels (rifled muskets with ring-socket bayonets in place of the smoothbores with plug bayonets they had).

Are there any historical examples of a Napoleonic-style army coming up against one still using pikes?
Basically bayonets and rifling are two separate but complimentary technologies finally combining into the same weapons, en masse, at about the Crimean War.

Plug-bayonets aren't exactly "pike and shot". Plug-bayonets bridge the gap between late "pike and shot" and early line-of-battle tactics, muskets with bayonets not stopping you from shooting, ie Napoleonic era. Plug bayonets reduced pikes from integral part of the battle line (though the reduction in pikes in favour of firepower is ongoing from the Renessaince forwards, and probably this stimulated the idea of bayonets but the plug version was an unsatisfactory compromise in function) to basically a curiosity, something to steady the command and colours. But they also had a fairly short life-span as plugging the gun sorta defanged your army.

Rifled muskets aren't really Napoleonic level either (in that the majority of the troops were issued with smoothbores still until about mid 1800s). Rifled muskets are something you start to see en-masse with the minie-ball as rifling and roundball is difficult to load and foul easily. The British e.g. used the smoothbore Brown Bess almost till the mid-1800s making it a century old before being replaced. This is because speed of loading and thus weight of fire was prized above accuracy in the line-of-battle style.

Other than that Vinyadan covered the instances I woulda mentioned. I think that's the closest you'll get. Most of the last serious use of pike disappears early 1700s during the War of Spanish Succession.

I will point out that during the Napoleonic wars the French went back to charging with weapons (well bayonets) in lieu of firepower as a fairly successful means, so getting rid of pikes isn't strictly a technological upgrade. The combination rifled/bayonet may be enough to render a determined charge impractical however. Even with bayonets a Napoelonic troop woudl likely find it hard to resists a pike charge as they be massively outranged if the attackers are not disordered by the volley.



Indeed, all the examples of "pikes" (which includes those Vinyadan references) always seem to be poorly-equipped peasant/conscript forces who have nothing else, rather than militaries that choose to fight with pikemen and musketeers.
That is in part because "linear tactics" was The Thing in the 1700s-1800s, it is how you fought like a proper civilized nation and hence the only way most officers could think of. Naturally history tended to show the most intransigent how wrong they were.

But also if the enemy is just walking towards you and you can shoot them at your leisure that's usually a good way to win.

Now I recall tough you might want to look up some of the battles of the Jacobite rebellions, the Highlanders were lightly equipped with firearms compared to the Royal troops but sometimes won, at least once in part due to the bayonets. Which was actually mentioned on wikipedia in the entry for plugbayonets. That coudl form a model for a potential not so shooty vs totally shooty army.

[Kiero]

Basically bayonets and rifling are two separate but complimentary technologies finally combining into the same weapons, en masse, at about the Crimean War.

Plug-bayonets aren't exactly "pike and shot". Plug-bayonets bridge the gap between late "pike and shot" and early line-of-battle tactics, muskets with bayonets not stopping you from shooting, ie Napoleonic era. Plug bayonets reduced pikes from integral part of the battle line (though the reduction in pikes in favour of firepower is ongoing from the Renessaince forwards, and probably this stimulated the idea of bayonets but the plug version was an unsatisfactory compromise in function) to basically a curiosity, something to steady the command and colours. But they also had a fairly short life-span as plugging the gun sorta defanged your army.

Rifled muskets aren't really Napoleonic level either (in that the majority of the troops were issued with smoothbores still until about mid 1800s). Rifled muskets are something you start to see en-masse with the minie-ball as rifling and roundball is difficult to load and foul easily. The British e.g. used the smoothbore Brown Bess almost till the mid-1800s making it a century old before being replaced. This is because speed of loading and thus weight of fire was prized above accuracy in the line-of-battle style.

Other than that Vinyadan covered the instances I woulda mentioned. I think that's the closest you'll get. Most of the last serious use of pike disappears early 1700s during the War of Spanish Succession.

I know plug bayonets aren't pike and shot. I was trying to avoid getting into the details of the fictional scenario, because I don't think they've very important to the question I was asking. Essentially, the forces the protagonists pick up are already less pike-dependent than their foes; they have plug bayonets and like to use as many bills/polearms as pikes partly to compensate for their smaller population. By contrast, the enemies they are fighting are full-on Pike and Shot, they have large blocks of pikemen with musketeers supporting them.

The protagonists then introduce rifled muskets with socket bayonets, removing all their forces pikemen/billmen and replacing everyone with riflemen. Another scenario-specific point is that on this world they don't have real cavalry (lacking horses or analogues), only a sort of dragoons, but that's not really germane.

But you've answered my question in part that the only meaningful overlap between pike and shot, and line tactics is the early 1700s.


I will point out that during the Napoleonic wars the French went back to charging with weapons (well bayonets) in lieu of firepower as a fairly successful means, so getting rid of pikes isn't strictly a technological upgrade. The combination rifled/bayonet may be enough to render a determined charge impractical however. Even with bayonets a Napoelonic troop woudl likely find it hard to resists a pike charge as they be massively outranged if the attackers are not disordered by the volley.

I'd call that a very specific exception for Napoleon's chosen method of psychological warfare. He had an artilleryman's scorn for infantry, and didn't seem to much care about the casualties they took as long as they won. The column shattered the morale of the opponents they came up against rather than beating them in a conventional manner (ie via firepower as you allude).

I do agree a pike block could absorb a lot of punishment, but I'm particularly interested in whether there were any real world examples where the ability of a phalanx to absorb fire they couldn't respond to in anything like the same volume was tested.

Was there no transition period where some militaries still relied on the pike and others had made the change over to line tactics?


That is in part because "linear tactics" was The Thing in the 1700s-1800s, it is how you fought like a proper civilized nation and hence the only way most officers could think of. Naturally history tended to show the most intransigent how wrong they were.

But also if the enemy is just walking towards you and you can shoot them at your leisure that's usually a good way to win.

Now I recall tough you might want to look up some of the battles of the Jacobite rebellions, the Highlanders were lightly equipped with firearms compared to the Royal troops but sometimes won, at least once in part due to the bayonets. Which was actually mentioned on wikipedia in the entry for plugbayonets. That coudl form a model for a potential not so shooty vs totally shooty army.

I think the '45 rebellion was the one that cemented the (plug) bayonet and the particular tactic of stabbing left, but I don't think the Highlanders made much use of the pike. That's specifically what I'm trying to find.

[snowblizz]

The protagonists then introduce rifled muskets with socket bayonets, removing all their forces pikemen/billmen and replacing everyone with riflemen. Another scenario-specific point is that on this world they don't have real cavalry (lacking horses or analogues), only a sort of dragoons, but that's not really germane. Actually that's critically gemane to the situation since the pike before it and the bayonet after it are specifically there as something to deal with cavalry. Remove cavalry and pikes are less interesting and bayonets most likely would not be invented at all.



I'd call that a very specific exception for Napoleon's chosen method of psychological warfare. He had an artilleryman's scorn for infantry, and didn't seem to much care about the casualties they took as long as they won. The column shattered the morale of the opponents they came up against rather than beating them in a conventional manner (ie via firepower as you allude).Not entirely, the 1700s Swedish army was fairly "hands on" too during the Great Northern War, the "Karolins" were quite famous for it, both cavalry and infantry. It's not as suicidal as may seem, smoothbores are terribly inaccurate and it's quite possible to goad a salvo out of a unit a bit too early for it to do much damage. It tended to be more decisive than the linear tactics normal manner of salvoing each other for ages. The military thinking kept going back and forth on the issue of melee or fireing during the entire "horse and musket" era.


I do agree a pike block could absorb a lot of punishment, but I'm particularly interested in whether there were any real world examples where the ability of a phalanx to absorb fire they couldn't respond to in anything like the same volume was tested.

Was there no transition period where some militaries still relied on the pike and others had made the change over to line tactics?

Not really no. The "problem" being that by the pike and shot era the pikes may still be considered the queens of the battlefield, and important as anchors for regiments without which shot would not survive, the real business of killing was mostly up to shot and artillery units. And changes tended to be imported rather quickly, many soldiers, especially officers moved about the various powers diffusing know-how. And eg during the 1700s most western nations took their cues from the French army either fighting against or with it.

[Flicker Nicker]

How well would a metal version of an Aztec War club work? Sorry for the strange question.

[Jormengand]

How well would a metal version of an Aztec War club work? Sorry for the strange question.

If you're talking about the weapons I think you are (macahuitls), part of what made them so horrific was that they left bits of themselves inside the target, because obsidian is super fragile... but it was also sharper than steel coul easily be got.

On the other hand, it's not like making what basically amounts to a big double-sided hatchet and swinging it at someone is going to be ineffective.

[DrewID]

On average, falchions don't weigh more than any other single-handed sword of the same era. The typical falchion (type 1a, see below) has a very thin cross section to make up for the large width.

Here is the full range of falchion/messer blades (the difference is in the hilt). These all weigh about the same on average, single-handed sword weights are remarkable similar throughout the medieval period and beyond- generally between 1 and 3 pounds.

I'd say your sword above is a type 5a falchion with 0 curvature.

https://pre00.deviantart.net/b81f/th/pre/f/2016/232/7/2/elmslie_typology_of_single_edged_medieval_swords_b y_shad_brooks-daenytz.jpg

This brings to mind a Weapons Question: What weapon typology systems exist? I know that there is Oakeshott typology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakeshott_typology) for medieval swords, Wheeler typology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_sword#Wheeler_typology) for Viking swords, and now I know hat there is Elmslie typology for falchions/messers (thank you for that, BTW). Are there others?

DrewID

[Lvl 2 Expert]

How well would a metal version of an Aztec War club work? Sorry for the strange question.

That's a sword.

No, seriously. A quick google for "macuahuitls weight" (thanks for the word Jormengand) gives me these data:
Weight 2.0–3.0 kg (4.4-6.6 lbs)
Length 90-120 cm (3-4 foot)
That's a bit on the heavy side for a European longsword, with a comparable or slightly shorter length. The weight sits further towards the front, so it will wield a bit like a cavalry saber, or maybe even towards a light axe, the weight packs a punch.

That's the brilliance of the design, they managed to combine the properties of two materials, wood and obsidian(/flint/some sort of stone) to achieve the same design that independently proved effective elsewhere, where they could make the things out of one material.

If you'd try to make the exact shape of these weapons out of steel rather than wood and stone the weapon would be way too heavy. Steel is roughly 9 times as dense as wood or 4 times as dense as stone. You'd have a 20kg (44 pound) weapon, way too heavy to really use. But if you'd take the same idea and tried to construct that out of steel rather than wood and stone, you'd have a sword.

[Jormengand]

I don't really think that "That's a sword" is necessarily accurate when macahuitls had a tendency to look like this (https://cdn.thinglink.me/api/image/54TLbcUcnRm3uxvNLe4Dsuw1q7kJd7TUK9VqzrfjMK6AHoHT1e h9WEcuQgSmUDvoM46aPvWnujWNj7r9V3rGCcVtSUZ38qymBgv7 bVo2CkgAxSJDzdKb8uuHQCyuaSczBRiEpq2eJ/320/320/scaledown). It's wielded more like a saw than a conventional sword, from what I've seen, too.

[Brother Oni]

The issue is that the macuahuitl's is basically using broken glass to cut through targets. As Jormengand mentioned, this is both ridiculously sharp and fragile, so to maintain a metal version's effectiveness, you'd have to mount the obsidian blades into a metal club.

As Lvl 2 Expert pointed out, directly replicating the weapon in the same dimensions with steel is unfeasible, but a lighter, thinner version would be possible, although it'd be more like a steel bar with obsidian blades than a sword.

According to Conquistador accounts, the one-handed macuahuitl was capable of decapitating horses (sometimes in a single blow), which is beyond what a sabre or other one handed sword can do to the best of my knowledge. I haven't seen any records of the two-handed macuahuitl's performance in comparison, but a more unwieldy, heavier hitting weapon (as it's still made out of wood) would be expected.

[eru001]

In the story I'm reading at the moment, futuristic types are stranded on a lower-tech world, which is militarily at the level of the Age of Pike and Shot. One of their earliest actions when they gain the confidence of some local forces, is to basically upgrade them to Napoleonic levels (rifled muskets with ring-socket bayonets in place of the smoothbores with plug bayonets they had).

Are there any historical examples of a Napoleonic-style army coming up against one still using pikes?



The Rebellion of 1798 in Ireland involved large numbers of Irish pikemen going up against British Redcoats. It ended predictably poorly for the Irish. Though is is worth noting that the pikes were only used because the Irish were not provided with all of the promised muskets from France, so utilizing large numbers of pikemen was more of a, "we have to use something" than a "we think this is a good Idea" situation


During the American Civil war there was a plan, though it was never carried out, by the Confederacy to equip some units of pikemen


In WWII, due to a shortage of firearms, "invasion pikes" consisting of a bayonet welded to a pole, were issued briefly to some units of the British Home Guard.

[Kiero]

The Rebellion of 1798 in Ireland involved large numbers of Irish pikemen going up against British Redcoats. It ended predictably poorly for the Irish. Though is is worth noting that the pikes were only used because the Irish were not provided with all of the promised muskets from France, so utilizing large numbers of pikemen was more of a, "we have to use something" than a "we think this is a good Idea" situation


During the American Civil war there was a plan, though it was never carried out, by the Confederacy to equip some units of pikemen


In WWII, due to a shortage of firearms, "invasion pikes" consisting of a bayonet welded to a pole, were issued briefly to some units of the British Home Guard.

I was looking for real pikemen, rather than scratch pikemen raised because there was nothing better available. That was the situation in the story.

As mentioned, weren't the "pikes" in the Tone Rebellion spears as far as we'd be concerned?

[wolflance]

The issue is that the macuahuitl's is basically using broken glass to cut through targets. As Jormengand mentioned, this is both ridiculously sharp and fragile, so to maintain a metal version's effectiveness, you'd have to mount the obsidian blades into a metal club.

As Lvl 2 Expert pointed out, directly replicating the weapon in the same dimensions with steel is unfeasible, but a lighter, thinner version would be possible, although it'd be more like a steel bar with obsidian blades than a sword.

According to Conquistador accounts, the one-handed macuahuitl was capable of decapitating horses (sometimes in a single blow), which is beyond what a sabre or other one handed sword can do to the best of my knowledge. I haven't seen any records of the two-handed macuahuitl's performance in comparison, but a more unwieldy, heavier hitting weapon (as it's still made out of wood) would be expected.
I think it might be better to just weld metal teeth to a metal club (or wooden club). Metal-level of sharpness should be sufficient for most combat needs, and you get a sturdier weapon to boot.

I also think the conquistadors were exaggerating, as one-swing decapitation is unlikely to be achieved with a saw-like weapon that cannot even draw-cut like a curved sword. A one hit kill that leaves the poor horse with a large, messy and zagged wound and pulverized neck bone might be possible, though.

[Socratov]

I think it might be better to just weld metal teeth to a metal club (or wooden club). Metal-level of sharpness should be sufficient for most combat needs, and you get a sturdier weapon to boot.

I also think the conquistadors were exaggerating, as one-swing decapitation is unlikely to be achieved with a saw-like weapon that cannot even draw-cut like a curved sword. A one hit kill that leaves the poor horse with a large, messy and zagged wound and pulverized neck bone might be possible, though.

Wouldn't that make a flat mace or morning star? I mean, you don't want a saw blade in metal as it could get stuck very easily, at least with such teeth.

[Vinyadan]

I think that decapitation was possible. The only realistic depiction of a Macuahuitl we have was made by XIX century antiquarians in Madrid, about a decade before the last surviving specimen was destroyed in a fire.

https://s17.postimg.org/6kiv7xpi7/Screenshot_2018-03-22_00.24.50_cr.png

It is a sword.

The book in general is very interesting. It's the third volume of a series of three. You can download it at the address in the picture.

[Deepbluediver]

I think that decapitation was possible. The only realistic depiction of a Macuahuitl we have was made by XIX century antiquarians in Madrid, about a decade before the last surviving specimen was destroyed in a fire.

https://s17.postimg.org/6kiv7xpi7/Screenshot_2018-03-22_00.24.50_cr.png

It is a sword.

The book in general is very interesting. It's the third volume of a series of three. You can download it at the address in the picture.
I always assumed it was difficult to behead someone- that's why "the executioner's axe" is a trope and and the guillotine was invented. Apparently though, it's easier than expected in some instances: click here (https://www.quora.com/How-easy-is-it-to-decapitate-someone-with-a-sword) for slightly gory account of butchering goats.

But it got me thinking about exactly what sort of circumstances you'd be comparing things between. In combat, it might be difficult to decapitate someone because the neck is a small, often heavily-armored target, and your enemy is focused on protecting his head and face anyway. By contrast, domesticated livestock would probably let you walk right up to them and take all the time you need to line up a two-handed power shot. So maybe the "difficulty" comes from different aspects (aim vs. cutting power, etc).

I'm still not convinced there isn't some element of propaganda to the horse-decapitation stories; "look at these horrid barbarians that we defeated through the grace of god!"- that kind of thing. Also, horses didn't exist in the Americas at this time, so they would have had to be brought over (at large expense) on a ship, and I doubt the spaniards where sacrificing valuable beasts of war for gits and shiggles. Finally horses are BIG animals- a horse's neck is easily as wide around as a person's torso, and heavily muscled, so it's less like decapitating a human and more like trying to bisect a human.
On the other hand, there aren't good historical records of a lot of pre-columbian cultures, so maybe some weapons where less like a sword and more like an axe. And the, under just the right set of circumstances, it's possible to decapitate a horse with a stone-chip blade.

[Mabn]

I think that decapitation was possible. The only realistic depiction of a Macuahuitl we have was made by XIX century antiquarians in Madrid, about a decade before the last surviving specimen was destroyed in a fire.

https://s17.postimg.org/6kiv7xpi7/Screenshot_2018-03-22_00.24.50_cr.png

It is a sword.

The book in general is very interesting. It's the third volume of a series of three. You can download it at the address in the picture.

What interests me in the picture is the edge configuration of the Macuahuitl "sword". Could you make a metal sword with a series of small rectangles with sharply rounded edges as its blade and still maintain the sharpness of such an edge? The design seems like it would be amazing at cutting soft targets because the rounded parts shear flesh as they pass and the multiple forward sections make many little cuts which widen the hole as they go. However I couldn't imagine actually sharpening such a sword without specialize implements. A flamberge style curve is one thing, but the curves on the Macuahuitl are far more pronounced and closer together.

[Mr Beer]

Beheading goats is one thing, would be much easier as described in the above link than doing so to human opponents. They have thinner necks than humans, were held still, sword wielder could use a downward chop, they have no armour and they’re not trying to kill you with deadly weapons.

Horses would be even tougher to decapitate, certainly war horses in a combat situation. Not saying it can’t be done but static goat chopping sounds like a far cry from taking out Spanish war horses with Stone Age weaponry.

Edit

It’s relevant that you don’t need a special sword or superhuman strength to behead near human sized animals though.

[wolflance]

I think that decapitation was possible. The only realistic depiction of a Macuahuitl we have was made by XIX century antiquarians in Madrid, about a decade before the last surviving specimen was destroyed in a fire.

https://s17.postimg.org/6kiv7xpi7/Screenshot_2018-03-22_00.24.50_cr.png

It is a sword.

The book in general is very interesting. It's the third volume of a series of three. You can download it at the address in the picture.
The problem with Macuahuilt horse beheading, besides its saw-like design, is that once those monomolecular obsidian blades cut into their target, a fat blunt wooden club gets in the way and prevents you from pushing the blades any deeper.

[Vinyadan]

The question is "how fat".

We imagine the cross-section to be like this:


__________
__________|
\___
\
___/
__________/
__________|

obsidian thinner than the wood holding it in place


or


___________ ___
___________| \
\
___________ /
___________|___/

obsidian thickness = wood thickness



or


_____
__________|_ \
____________| \
\
____________ /
____________| /
|_____/

obsidian thicker than wood.


I personally am for the second option, with obsidian having about the same thickness as the wood. Maybe it was obsidian tapering in a certain way, maybe it was wood.

[Zombimode]

None of those options adress the issue: that you have to work a big fat club through the horse's neck.

[Vinyadan]

None of those options adress the issue: that you have to work a big fat club through the horse's neck.

If the club (or, I would say, plank) isn't larger than the blades, yes, they do.

[Max_Killjoy]

If the club (or, I would say, plank) isn't larger than the blades, yes, they do.

A sharp fat club is still a fat club.

Most metal blades have to consider the tradeoff that comes with blade thickness behind the cutting edge -- a wider max width is harder to push through the cut material than a thinner max width.

An inch-thick object is harder to force through the cut material than a quarter-inch-thick object, all else being equal.

[Knaight]

If the club (or, I would say, plank) isn't larger than the blades, yes, they do.

That removes the problem of having to push something blunt through. There's still a very fundamental problem of volume displaced - which is the cross section of the neck along the cutting plane times the thickness of the blade used to cut*. This applies to blades in general, and is part of the reason you get the extremely thin blades in falchions and the like.

A machuatl goes very much the other way. They are exceptionally sharp, and they likely tend towards higher angular momentum (though they might well have tapered; it's a tricky design that involves a lock of skilled obsidian-knapping, but there's no reason to think the people making these weapons weren't good at it), both of which would help with the cutting, but that extreme thickness doesn't.

There's also the small matter of how the cultures that used and developed the machuatl didn't have horses, and didn't have a lot of time to develop weapons to deal with them. That's not to say that they couldn't kill horses just fine, just that straight up decapitation was unlikely.

*There's obviously a level of simplification here.

[Carl]

Don't forget obsidian is ridiculously sharp compared to even a good steel blade, it may break more easily but it's also going to take a lot less force to cut through things.

[Spookykid]

Obsidian isnt sharper, its serated! That add a whole lot of cutting power, i've seen tests with arrows but never swords.

[Socratov]

Don't forget obsidian is ridiculously sharp compared to even a good steel blade, it may break more easily but it's also going to take a lot less force to cut through things.


Obsidian isnt sharper, its serated! That add a whole lot of cutting power, i've seen tests with arrows but never swords.

No matter the profile, for travelling through something semi solid or liquid all that matters is the ultimate profile that will displace the semi-solid/liquid stuff. The sharpness of the obsidian is great at severing the fibers, but a fat club that travels behind is still will create a lot more drag and will take great amounts of energy to travel through.

And yes ceramics, especially if they resemble sillicate flakes on a molecular level then it is freakishly, no, ridiculously sharp. Very brittle, but very sharp.

And serrated edges only work well when you drag them along. They create beautiful lacerations but won't penetrate all that deeply (as again, the serrations create more profile to create drag instead of 1 continuous line that allows for penetration).

[Mr Beer]

Obsidian isnt sharper, its serated! That add a whole lot of cutting power, i've seen tests with arrows but never swords.

It's sharper.


Well-crafted obsidian blades, as with any glass knife, can have a cutting edge many times sharper than high-quality steel surgical scalpels, the cutting edge of the blade being only about 3 nanometers thick.[44] Even the sharpest metal knife has a jagged, irregular blade when viewed under a strong enough microscope; when examined even under an electron microscope an obsidian blade is still smooth and even.[45]

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

[Vinyadan]

About whether or not it could decapitate a horse: the claim in Wikipedia is likely due to the primary sources contained in this paper: http://www.woosterglobalhistory.org/LAcolonial/archive/files/23395812_33c717a7fb.pdf

I think that they must have been decent slashing weapons, and that the plank was an impediment because of its larger volume compared to steel swords, but not so extreme as to stop the weapon from penetrating (slicing thourgh?) after the very short obsidian blade. There are a couple of reasons for this, one being that I base my image of the weapon on the drawing I posted earlier, which looks very different from most reconstructions; these appear to consider the macuahuitl a very sharp flanged mace, while I see it as a cutting weapon, the same way in which it is described in accounts. The more convincing reason is the teputzopilli, a "spear" built with the same technology, and which looks a lot like a piercing weapon to me. While piercing weapons obviously make it easier to penetrate because of the smaller entering volume, it means that the technology could be used, at least in this case, without having a plank with such a wide section as to stop the weapon from following the obsidian blade. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Tepoztopilli_Aztec_spear_Armeria_Real_collection_i n_Madrid.png

I haven't read the paper thouroughly yet, btw. It was the last step in an attempt to find the Spanish sources and check the translations.

[Clistenes]

I always assumed it was difficult to behead someone- that's why "the executioner's axe" is a trope and and the guillotine was invented. Apparently though, it's easier than expected in some instances: click here (https://www.quora.com/How-easy-is-it-to-decapitate-someone-with-a-sword) for slightly gory account of butchering goats.

But it got me thinking about exactly what sort of circumstances you'd be comparing things between. In combat, it might be difficult to decapitate someone because the neck is a small, often heavily-armored target, and your enemy is focused on protecting his head and face anyway. By contrast, domesticated livestock would probably let you walk right up to them and take all the time you need to line up a two-handed power shot. So maybe the "difficulty" comes from different aspects (aim vs. cutting power, etc).

I'm still not convinced there isn't some element of propaganda to the horse-decapitation stories; "look at these horrid barbarians that we defeated through the grace of god!"- that kind of thing. Also, horses didn't exist in the Americas at this time, so they would have had to be brought over (at large expense) on a ship, and I doubt the spaniards where sacrificing valuable beasts of war for gits and shiggles. Finally horses are BIG animals- a horse's neck is easily as wide around as a person's torso, and heavily muscled, so it's less like decapitating a human and more like trying to bisect a human.
On the other hand, there aren't good historical records of a lot of pre-columbian cultures, so maybe some weapons where less like a sword and more like an axe. And the, under just the right set of circumstances, it's possible to decapitate a horse with a stone-chip blade.

The Aztecs sacrificed captured horses on top of pyramids, just like they did with captured soldiers, and it seems that they used their macuahuitl (one of their sacrificial methods) because they didn't know how to do the "cut the still beating heart out" to a horse.

[eru001]

does anyone know how thick a steel breastplate would need to be to stop a 1700's era musket ball? (I am aware that by the 1700's breastplates were worn only by specific cavalry units and were not expected to stop musket balls, I am asking how thick one would need to be in order to stop one.)

[PersonMan]

I think the answer is going to depend on what range you're looking at. Stopping a musket ball at 100m is going to be different than stopping one fired just 5m away.

[VoxRationis]

What is the purpose of a two-handed sword (of the European variety, if it makes any difference)? I've seen videos of people sparring with them, and I get that the video game version of them cleaving through masses of people like a farmer reaping wheat isn't accurate, so what is the point of such a weapon? This thread can be a bit dismissive of swords, so I'm expecting a lot of "there is no point; it's merely prestige," but surely there must have been some tactical thought process behind the desire to make a two-handed sword.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

What is the purpose of a two-handed sword (of the European variety, if it makes any difference)? I've seen videos of people sparring with them, and I get that the video game version of them cleaving through masses of people like a farmer reaping wheat isn't accurate, so what is the point of such a weapon? This thread can be a bit dismissive of swords, so I'm expecting a lot of "there is no point; it's merely prestige," but surely there must have been some tactical thought process behind the desire to make a two-handed sword.

More power, more range. Similar to chopping wood with a 2 handed ax vs a hatchet. The downside is that you can't use that second hand for anything else, like holding a shield.

[Haighus]

What is the purpose of a two-handed sword (of the European variety, if it makes any difference)? I've seen videos of people sparring with them, and I get that the video game version of them cleaving through masses of people like a farmer reaping wheat isn't accurate, so what is the point of such a weapon? This thread can be a bit dismissive of swords, so I'm expecting a lot of "there is no point; it's merely prestige," but surely there must have been some tactical thought process behind the desire to make a two-handed sword.
To start with, swords are very good, versatile weapons, they are just uncommon as a primary military weapon, and are usually back-up sidearms. They are also simply the best civilian sidearm before modern pistols .

It really depends on the type of two-handed sword. "True" two-handers, like the bidenhander/montante/spadone/greatsword type, are two big to be worn at the hip, and are a primary weapon. They essentially fit into the same sort of category as halberds and similar short cut and thrust polearms, and are used in a similar way. Greatswords were also favoured by bodyguards, as they are very good at denying an area and halting multiple attackers whilst others escape.

On the other hand, longswords were still two-handed, but small enough to wear at the hip, and also to use reasonably with one hand. They serve the same purpose as one-handed swords and are generally a sidearm.

Longswords have several advantages over one-handed swords- they are quicker, and often a little longer in the blade, so a longsword matches well against a single one-handed sword. If you are fully equipped with other weapons for war, and have no shield, a longsword makes a good sidearm because of this, as it is almost as easy to carry as a one-handed sword.

However a longsword is harder to use with a shield or other off-hand weapon, so the one-handed sword is better if you need to use a shield.

For civilians, a one-handed sword and a buckler is as easy to carry as a longsword, and matches pretty evenly. However, a lot of places prohibited civilians from carrying bucklers, so this is another situation where longswords are useful.

In general though, longswords are found most commonly when used as a military sidearm for well armoured soldiers without shields.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

does anyone know how thick a steel breastplate would need to be to stop a 1700's era musket ball? (I am aware that by the 1700's breastplates were worn only by specific cavalry units and were not expected to stop musket balls, I am asking how thick one would need to be in order to stop one.)

Xkcd (https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/) thought me that there is a theoretical maximum depth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth) the bullet can get to. D=L*(density projectile/density surface). Lead has a density around 11.34, steel around 8.05 (quickly googled numbers, both dependent on alloy and such). For the 17th century musket ball let's assume a 12 bore, I think that's kind of common at that point? Maybe 10 bore or 8 bore as well (those are larger). 12 bore would give us (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_(firearms)) a diameter of 18.53 mm. 18.53*(11.34/8.05)~26.1mm.

This tells us this is a useless number. Nobody ever wore steel armor that thick, yet musket balls didn't punch through armor like paper all the time. And since we're going to be operating far below the theoretical limit, speed is going to have a huge impact on the actual number.

I don't know how to get the actual number for any speed though...

[Socratov]

What is the purpose of a two-handed sword (of the European variety, if it makes any difference)? I've seen videos of people sparring with them, and I get that the video game version of them cleaving through masses of people like a farmer reaping wheat isn't accurate, so what is the point of such a weapon? This thread can be a bit dismissive of swords, so I'm expecting a lot of "there is no point; it's merely prestige," but surely there must have been some tactical thought process behind the desire to make a two-handed sword.
Well, for one thing it gives great reach, and the added mass and two-handedness (which goes a long way to create leverage and torque, form an engineering standpoint) really help in controlling the blade. It's easier to wear, carry and use then pole-arms, and can be used in a pinch through half-swording, mordhau or using the sword parts to dish out pain (the point is deadly, the edge is deadly, the crossguard/quillons are deadly and the pommel is deadly, all hinging on correct use). Also, while it is bigger and heavier, the added 300grams (on average) when compared to a 1handed sword make it often more wieldable then a one-handed sword. Considering the extra length and leverage that can really mean an advantage in combat.

Having used a two-handed sword, a heater shield and a buckler my top 3 would probably be 1) buckler and one-handed, 2) long (2-handed) sword and 3) heater shield and one handed sword.

If you have the option of forgoing a shield (through armour or other means of protection) then a 2-handed sword really works great.
downsides will be close-quarters combat. Then reach will hinder you and the longsword becomes unwieldy. The fact that generally you will need 2 hands to operate it means no buckler or shield for you. Neither will a parrying dagger or swordbreaker be an option. That said, the added hand will increase the speed at which you will move it and make certain transitions from one guard/position/cut to another a loooot quicker.

And then there is something I haven't even touched on yet: cutting capability. Since the sweet spot (point of impact) is further from your hand and with the added weight it means you can enter more energy into your swing, and considering for a 1-handed sword and a 2-handed sword at equal sharpness, and thus cut better.

And please not that no weapon is perfect.

A rapier is absolute best at stabbing. The rest, not so much or not at all.

One handed swords can be very versatile, but reach will, at some point or another, become an issue.

Two-handed swords sacrifice added defensive options for more reach and power.

Falchions are second to none when chopping, but try to deliver a stab and you might as well use a stick.

Sabres cut well, and give great flowing motion, but you had better get in close.

Dagger? More deadly then any other weapon. Seriously, when swordfighting you might guard yourself well and get out unscathed due to vast skill difference. Knives and daggers? You will get cut. You only option is hoping you trade minor wounds on you for major ones on your adversary.

Unarmed, well unarmed and dagger fighting make for great fighters since the core values and skills that govern fencing are exemplified in unarmed (wrestling) and dagger fighting. They rely heavily on reading your opponent, understanding the human body, stance, timing, edge alignment, point alignment, footwork, and so on. The works. and boy is it hard. It looks so easy, but try it with padding and a fencing mask to spar a bit and then for added difficulty, try not to have a stabfest but really try to disarm, counter, defend, control your opponent instead of stabbing someone first to see wether you survive.

And I haven't even touched poleweapons. Which is a whole different animal and each have their own unique strengths and weaknesses (hint: the same pros and cons to long swords, bit more extreme)

So, I drifted a bit off-topic here, so back on topic, yes long swords have their time and place to use and if you are unsure wether they work or not, remember that long sword is the single most described weapon in manuals. Spanning centuries. And those manuals weren't written just to act like a bunch of hipsters to describe rarely used weapons and tools. Bookwriting/copying and imagemaking was way to freaking expensive for that.

[gkathellar]

What is the purpose of a two-handed sword (of the European variety, if it makes any difference)? I've seen videos of people sparring with them, and I get that the video game version of them cleaving through masses of people like a farmer reaping wheat isn't accurate, so what is the point of such a weapon? This thread can be a bit dismissive of swords, so I'm expecting a lot of "there is no point; it's merely prestige," but surely there must have been some tactical thought process behind the desire to make a two-handed sword.

Uh ... well first of all, swords in general are phenomenal defensive weapons characterized by usefulness in a wide variety of situations, and an architecture of technique that can serve as the tactical, mechanical and conceptual grounding for training in every other weapon imaginable. Most swords combine a long cutting edge, a mechanically efficient thrusting point, tremendous resistance to damage, and a variety of defensive features.

Second, remember that thing Archimedes said about levers and being long enough and places to rest them and moving the world? Weapons are levers. Two-handed weapons are long levers that can rapidly alternate between two widely-spaced fulcrums. In hands that know how to use them, not only are two handed weapons fast like woah, but their speed can be a direct function of length and of the spacing of the hands. This is in addition to reach and power.

Now, I'm going to assume you mean longer blades like the montante, claymore and zweihander (and hell, the nodachi and dadao), as the efficacy of the longsword as a dueling weapon is very nearly a truism. These longer two handed swords in particular combine many ideal features of the sword and spear, and cruciform hilts add huge versatility in the bind and function as war hammers. With solid footwork, a sword of this type can strike from a dizzying variety of angles without ever allowing the opponent a chance to retaliate. The biggest problem with such a weapon is that you need space to use it (but less than you might think), and that it can be impractical in everyday life. For bodyguards, masters-at-arms, and some professional soldiers, this would have been less of a concern.

[Deepbluediver]

This thread can be a bit dismissive of swords,
I don't think we're dismissive at all- I think we have a realistic view of them. It only looks "dismissive" if you try to compare it to something like Hollywood or Cartoons (especially Anime) which tend to completely overhype the effectiveness and ubiquity of swords.

[Mabn]

I had another silly idea. I heard someone mention that pikes in formation could foul up arrows. What if you amplified the effect by putting long tufts of wool or hair on the last few feat of the pike so it looked sort of like a giant feather duster with a spike on the end? The idea would be that when you held they together in a big group projectiles trying to hit you would have to go through several feet of thick fluff and would loose their force. I understand that any weight at the end of something as long as a pike would be unwieldy, but if it was effective the soldiers in question could probably forgo any kind of armor and if necessary the pike could be made a few feet shorter since the wool would also make it egregiously difficult for cavalry with lances to try poking you and wheeling away.

[Haighus]

I had another silly idea. I heard someone mention that pikes in formation could foul up arrows. What if you amplified the effect by putting long tufts of wool or hair on the last few feat of the pike so it looked sort of like a giant feather duster with a spike on the end? The idea would be that when you held they together in a big group projectiles trying to hit you would have to go through several feet of thick fluff and would loose their force. I understand that any weight at the end of something as long as a pike would be unwieldy, but if it was effective the soldiers in question could probably forgo any kind of armor and if necessary the pike could be made a few feet shorter since the wool would also make it egregiously difficult for cavalry with lances to try poking you and wheeling away.

Based on how often Scottish schiltrons were mauled by English longbowmen before they were better armoured, I don't think pikes alone do much to stop arrows.

The fluff could work, but how much more unwieldy do the pikes become once they have a wad of fluff carrying dozens of arrows stuck into it? Launch enough arrows, and the pikes will become very top heavy.

[Deepbluediver]

The Aztecs sacrificed captured horses on top of pyramids, just like they did with captured soldiers, and it seems that they used their macuahuitl (one of their sacrificial methods) because they didn't know how to do the "cut the still beating heart out" to a horse.
I had never heard that before- what is the source you're getting it from?
I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just curious.

[Deepbluediver]

The fluff could work, but how much more unwieldy do the pikes become once they have a wad of fluff carrying dozens of arrows stuck into it? Launch enough arrows, and the pikes will become very top heavy.
How heavy is an arrow? How does it compare it a pike-head? How many of them would it take before they significantly contributed to unbalancing the weapon?

Also possibly related, here's a video describing what is essentially a cloth arrow-shield used by Japanese samurai: CLICK ME! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B_6BU7SYf8)

[Mike_G]

How heavy is an arrow? How does it compare it a pike-head? How many of them would it take before they significantly contributed to unbalancing the weapon?

Also possibly related, here's a video describing what is essentially a cloth arrow-shield used by Japanese samurai: CLICK ME! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B_6BU7SYf8)

A war arrow has some considerable heft, and if it's at the end of the pike, that will increase the effect

This link has arrows weighing around 50 grams (about 1.5 oz) which means ten would weigh about a pound, which would be a boatload of extra weight. All the sites have a range of weights, but 50 grams seems pretty much the median within all the data.

http://www.longbow-archers.com/militaryarrow.html

I'm not convinced that fluff would stop an arrow. Maybe slow it down and rob it of energy. I'd have to see some tests to buy that.

[wolflance]

I had another silly idea. I heard someone mention that pikes in formation could foul up arrows. What if you amplified the effect by putting long tufts of wool or hair on the last few feat of the pike so it looked sort of like a giant feather duster with a spike on the end? The idea would be that when you held they together in a big group projectiles trying to hit you would have to go through several feet of thick fluff and would loose their force. I understand that any weight at the end of something as long as a pike would be unwieldy, but if it was effective the soldiers in question could probably forgo any kind of armor and if necessary the pike could be made a few feet shorter since the wool would also make it egregiously difficult for cavalry with lances to try poking you and wheeling away.
Enter Chinese langxian, which do everything you asked and then some. (Plus you don't need to worry about arrows stuck in the wool weighting it down)

http://greatmingmilitary.blogspot.com/2014/08/unique-weapon-of-ming-dynasty-lang-xian.html

[Haighus]

Enter Chinese langxian, which do everything you asked and then some.

http://greatmingmilitary.blogspot.com/2014/08/unique-weapon-of-ming-dynasty-lang-xian.html

That is a hilarious weapon! Imagine standing in a battleline, and seeing a bunch of pointy shaking bushes march towards you...

I'm not sure how much defense they would provide against arrows, and it looks like they block the visibility of the wielder as much as opponents. It is basically a mobile wall?

I think someone needs to do some tests!

[wolflance]

That is a hilarious weapon! Imagine standing in a battleline, and seeing a bunch of pointy shaking bushes march towards you...

I'm not sure how much defense they would provide against arrows, and it looks like they block the visibility of the wielder as much as opponents. It is basically a mobile wall?

I think someone needs to do some tests!
That is equally hilarious and terrifying. Actually it blocks the vision of the enemy much more seriously than the wielder, as the "shaking branches" are shoved in-your-face style onto the enemy, and away from the friendlies.

As for arrow defensibility, it certainly isn't foul/arrow-proof, but shooting an arrow through any bush is apparently quite hard (if modern bowhunters' experience is anything to go by)

(grabbes this photo from the same blog)
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EprjTRHG9O4/WHUH1KlIl7I/AAAAAAAADQ4/I9eoQiIBnjE_pM5zXgC5dDVIP3W6oi1vgCLcB/s1600/6597914191586646756.jpg


Also possibly related, here's a video describing what is essentially a cloth arrow-shield used by Japanese samurai: CLICK ME! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B_6BU7SYf8)
The arrow-shield-balloon thing was probably a myth. It might work, but it was likely not designed explicitly for that purpose/with arrow-defense in mind.

http://gunbai-militaryhistory.blogspot.com/2018/02/horo-samurai-cape.html

[Mabn]

My vision of it was more like a very soft brush than a cotton swab, that is to say not one loose mass of material but many loose bits of material. I had though such a think would let the arrows fall out as you moved with the pike while still being in the path of the arrow as it shot. Would arrows still get stuck a large percentage of the time? Or were the number of arrows flying just so significant that a few at a time would add up? I suppose that the design in question being similar to a very fluffy dog's hair it would accumulate all kinds of junk in short order.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

If arrows weighing you down is the problem you can mount a disk of some solid material around the pike.

Since it wasn't done I have to assume it was considered a worse option than wearing armor. Possible factors:
- The weight of armor rests on your body, not the tip of a pike, and is much easier to carry.
- A shield 4 meters in front of the formation is going to stop some arrows that would have hit, stop some arrows that would have missed and miss some arrows that would have hit. Armor protects a body from things hitting that body.
- Any of these ideas limit visibility. Does it limit the enemy's visibility more? That's hardly relevant. They just need to be able to see your formation in order to fire at you.

I can see some sense in the bamboo version, especially because it woud be available to people who can't afford any armor. But for slightly more solid forms of protection: if you can get your hands on it and tie it to your pike, you can tie it to yourself instead.

[Martin Greywolf]

First, a source, the whole pike can deflect an arrow thing is only mentioned in one historical source total, that being Polybius talking about macedonian sarissa formations (in The Histories). This claim is massively suspect for mnay reasons, the chief ones being: makes little logical sense and sarissa troops using a small shield and fairly extensive armor (which was what probably stopped the arrows). The back rows of the formation did carry the pikes at 45 degree angle once they engaged, but that was most likely to make it quicker to lower them if necessary.

If there is any truth to Polybius in this, I'd say it's that the sarissa deflected a few arrows from a salvo and it got exaggerated in the retelling.

Now, to the Chinese weirdness and the lang xian. As far as I know, it wasn't originally (described in Jixiao xinshu - New treatise on military efficiency - in c1570) meant to stop arrows at all, it was used in Mandarin duck formation - once the front line fighter in the formation charged against the enemy, the lang xian lancers are supposed to push the things above his head to protect him. In this situation, it does squat against arrows, since all arrows you're willing to put into engaged melee forces are flat trajectory point blank shots. What the things are excellent at are cathing the shafts of enemy spears and pushing them away from your charging sword and shield man, as well as stopping or cushioning any descending cuts from above.

The same manual also describes that when the Mandarin duck is not engaging, they should be crouched behind their two sword and shield guys for protection.

[Max_Killjoy]

The arrow-shield-balloon thing was probably a myth. It might work, but it was likely not designed explicitly for that purpose/with arrow-defense in mind.

http://gunbai-militaryhistory.blogspot.com/2018/02/horo-samurai-cape.html
(http://gunbai-militaryhistory.blogspot.com/2018/02/horo-samurai-cape.html)

I saw where someone else tested it, and it worked fairly well for them too.

Will try to find.

[Mabn]

If arrows weighing you down is the problem you can mount a disk of some solid material around the pike.

Since it wasn't done I have to assume it was considered a worse option than wearing armor. Possible factors:
- The weight of armor rests on your body, not the tip of a pike, and is much easier to carry.
- A shield 4 meters in front of the formation is going to stop some arrows that would have hit, stop some arrows that would have missed and miss some arrows that would have hit. Armor protects a body from things hitting that body.
- Any of these ideas limit visibility. Does it limit the enemy's visibility more? That's hardly relevant. They just need to be able to see your formation in order to fire at you.

I can see some sense in the bamboo version, especially because it woud be available to people who can't afford any armor. But for slightly more solid forms of protection: if you can get your hands on it and tie it to your pike, you can tie it to yourself instead.
If you could equip your soldiers with wool armor 4 feet thick they would be entirely safe from arrows. They would also die of heatstroke and be incapable of being in formation. The reason I suggested putting the 4 feet of wool on the pike was that it provided less fatal insulation and still enabled the soldiers to stand close together. The tight bunching and length of the pike would also allow the same amount of wool to protect multiple soldiers because it is all at the front and top rather than being wasted in between them where no arrow could ever hit. Or that was the theory anyway.

[wolflance]

First, a source, the whole pike can deflect an arrow thing is only mentioned in one historical source total, that being Polybius talking about macedonian sarissa formations (in The Histories). This claim is massively suspect for mnay reasons, the chief ones being: makes little logical sense and sarissa troops using a small shield and fairly extensive armor (which was what probably stopped the arrows). The back rows of the formation did carry the pikes at 45 degree angle once they engaged, but that was most likely to make it quicker to lower them if necessary.

If there is any truth to Polybius in this, I'd say it's that the sarissa deflected a few arrows from a salvo and it got exaggerated in the retelling.

Now, to the Chinese weirdness and the lang xian. As far as I know, it wasn't originally (described in Jixiao xinshu - New treatise on military efficiency - in c1570) meant to stop arrows at all, it was used in Mandarin duck formation - once the front line fighter in the formation charged against the enemy, the lang xian lancers are supposed to push the things above his head to protect him. In this situation, it does squat against arrows, since all arrows you're willing to put into engaged melee forces are flat trajectory point blank shots. What the things are excellent at are cathing the shafts of enemy spears and pushing them away from your charging sword and shield man, as well as stopping or cushioning any descending cuts from above.

The same manual also describes that when the Mandarin duck is not engaging, they should be crouched behind their two sword and shield guys for protection.
The use of langxian to deflect arrow was attested by someone else (Wu Shu, to be precise) - it was a common enough weapon that some other writers also wrote about it.

[jayem]

wool on the pike was that it provided less fatal insulation and still enabled the soldiers to stand close together.
If you're doing that anyway could you put your cloak/blanket on 4 pikes (you could even have 2 layers if you tied them on)?

It would mean your pikes involved were almost unusable, but in a situation where you are massively superior in terms of mid range while massively inferior in terms of long range...

[edit to add a bottom rung like that could in theory at that point also catch an entire line of opposing pike too, like the chinese example]

[Kiero]

If there is any truth to Polybius in this, I'd say it's that the sarissa deflected a few arrows from a salvo and it got exaggerated in the retelling.


I would tend to believe it is as Polybius wrote it. Polybius was an actual soldier and general with active combat experience in the era he was writing about. He wasn't, like Livy and others, a scholar writing from the comfort of his home centuries after the event, translating sources written by other people.

[jayem]

I would tend to believe it is as Polybius wrote it. Polybius was an actual soldier and general with active combat experience in the era he was writing about. He wasn't, like Livy and others, a scholar writing from the comfort of his home centuries after the event, translating sources written by other people.

Doing the pseudo math for arrows from above, 1" effective flat width, 25" spacing and about 10 independent effective ranks/layers gives about 40% deflection. Which on the one hand means a lot of arrows get through, but about means a lot of bounces will be observed (and as those who get hit don't write home about it...). The same is true for 2" in 24" * 6 ranks.

[Haighus]

Doing the pseudo math for arrows from above, 1" effective flat width, 25" spacing and about 10 independent effective ranks/layers gives about 40% deflection. Which on the one hand means a lot of arrows get through, but about means a lot of bounces will be observed (and as those who get hit don't write home about it...). The same is true for 2" in 24" * 6 ranks.
It would be remarkable if 40% were deflected- each soldier occupies a ~25 square inch space, not a 25" line, so you have to multiply the space covered by 25. So for a start, that drops it to between 1 and 2% deflection. Then we have to consider that arrows could fall in a wide range of trajectories, not just from straight down, and as archer formations tend to have a lot of depth, increasing the number of trajectories, this means you can expect the area that needs to be "covered" by each pike to be greater than 25 square inches. To be fair, the length of the pikes startes to play a role too when considering other angles, as the shaft can be struck along it's length, but there is also more human to hit as the angle gets shallower, so I don't think this scales favourably for the pike as an arrow defense.

In addition, deflected arrows are not automatically non-lethal, many arrows that hit a rounded shaft will still likely have lethal force. It could be enough to stop them penetrating some kind of armour, clothing or shield that the arrow would've penetrated without deflection though, or make them less likely to penetrate to a lethal depth. So I am sure a mass of pike shafts helps, but I think the actual meaningful difference is small, and the armour and shields as previously mentioned would play a much greater role.

[Clistenes]

I had never heard that before- what is the source you're getting it from?
I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just curious.

It happened during the Sorroful Night I think. Captured horses were sacrificed together with spanish prisioners and their allies, and their heads exposed.

[jayem]

It would be remarkable if 40% were deflected- each soldier occupies a ~25 square inch space, not a 25" line, so you have to multiply the space covered by 25. So for a start, that drops it to between 1 and 2% deflection.

I'd already treated the pike as a line (the condition about the arrows coming from above was actually to avoid the case where the point was important, although I can see how that was unclear).
This covers the arch aspect of the trajectories too (except for the cases where the trajectory is more or less parallel to the pike for the length of the pike, which is unlikely, unless they are very shallow or steep arcs). We only need to consider the location of the arrow as it passes through each 'plane' of pikewall[ceiling]. It does break down if the pike are too grid like and archers are perfectly aligned with the pike direction though (which is rather an obvious test case).


In addition, deflected arrows are not automatically non-lethal, many arrows that hit a rounded shaft will still likely have lethal force.

I was hoping it would mess up their orientation. It's got a meter of so to spin round in.

[Brother Oni]

That is a hilarious weapon! Imagine standing in a battleline, and seeing a bunch of pointy shaking bushes march towards you...

I'm not sure how much defense they would provide against arrows, and it looks like they block the visibility of the wielder as much as opponents. It is basically a mobile wall?

I think someone needs to do some tests!

It's funny until the barbs in the lang xian get hold of your clothing, drag you down and his spearman mate stabs you. It's a formation weapon used in conjunction with others; the mandarin duck formation had shields in front, langxian in second, then spears in the third:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BabIA0Kb2sU/VnUSmCSKrgI/AAAAAAAACGQ/nmEjpo3U3Tk/s1600/Mandarin_Duck_Formation.jpg
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K2liPU4Fb-Y/VnUUgyUUCoI/AAAAAAAACGc/M0j-BWc9Fx8/s1600/Mandarin_Duck_Formation_Engagement.jpg

The 2017 movie God of War (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4I0trfbGl0) has some very good examples of its use (although the spears aren't long enough) and depicts a not well known time in Chinese history - the 16th Century wako (Japanese pirates) raids on China.

[rrgg]

On the subject of pikes and Bayonets, Here's "Pallas Armata" written by military veteren Sir James Turner in the 1670s. In particular I'd look through the chapter on page 173 "Of the offensive Arms or Weapons, used by the Infantry of several Nations" and the chapter on page 178 "Master Lupton's Book against the use of the Pike examined":

https://books.google.com/books?id=0m9nAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

In particular note that he mentions that the plug bayonet is already a common weapon, and claims that it make for a more effective sidearm than a sword or musket butt. But he still doesn't even consider the possibility that it might allow a musketeer to stop horses or a charging pikeman, and it seems that no one else at the time thought it could either.

Master Lupton's new "invention" doesn't seem to have been any sort of bayonet either, but rather something like a swedish feather, or a musket rest with a long knife blade on one end so that the musketeers may quickly stick them in the ground and create a makeshift barricade of sharpened stakes if they get caught out in the open. However, Even Gustavus only experimented with this weapon for a very short period, and by the time Turner was writing musketeers were no longer using musket rests anyways, so there wasn't really a point.

[Mike_G]

In particular note that he mentions that the plug bayonet is already a common weapon, and claims that it make for a more effective sidearm than a sword or musket butt. But he still doesn't even consider the possibility that it might allow a musketeer to stop horses or a charging pikeman, and it seems that no one else at the time thought it could either.


Bayonets were very effective in discouraging cavalry. Once the pike more or less vanished, musketeers with bayonets, so long as they held firm, generally had little to fear from cavalry charges. If they broke, that was different, but I imagine pikemen out of formation wouldn't do much better.

Was a musket with a bayonet as good as a pike in melee? Maybe not, but who cares? If Napoleonic infantry in square with bayonets could hold off cavalry, it was plenty good enough, and the entire unit was able to fire, instead of just a portion, like a pike and shot army.

[Haighus]

I wonder if the difference comes from the changes in cavalry. When the pike was still prevalent, the kind of armoured heavy cavalry you see in the late medieval era is still on the battlefield, and much more capable of forcing open infantry formations than later, lighter cavalry that is mostly armed with swords. Units like the Polish Hussars are a considerably more formidable opponent for a formed infantry unit than a unit like the British Horse Guards of the Napoleonic wars, depsite both being "heavy" cavalry throughout most their respective eras (the Polish Hussars did start as medium cavalry). The Hussars were even known to break formed pike squares, so I feel they would be capable of breaking bayonet-armed squares much more easily.

However, such heavy cavalry is obviously a much greater investment of resources than the later kind, and I think this is why it fades away, and then concurrently the need for pikes declines. Even the French Curaissiers of later times, despite being the heaviest cavalry around, were not as well armoured and equipped as earlier cavalry. All the later cavalry was essentially medium-to-light cavalry by pike-and-shot standards, and I think truly heavy cavalry is a big reason bayonets were not adopted earlier.

[rrgg]

Bayonets were very effective in discouraging cavalry. Once the pike more or less vanished, musketeers with bayonets, so long as they held firm, generally had little to fear from cavalry charges. If they broke, that was different, but I imagine pikemen out of formation wouldn't do much better.

Was a musket with a bayonet as good as a pike in melee? Maybe not, but who cares? If Napoleonic infantry in square with bayonets could hold off cavalry, it was plenty good enough, and the entire unit was able to fire, instead of just a portion, like a pike and shot army.

"so long as they held firm" being the key phrase here. If you went back in time to the early 17th century how are you going to convince anyone that a thin line of unarmored infantry holding short muskets and bayonets would be enough against cavalry when they have many examples of even solid pike squares being broken up by cavalry charges? Even if you were somehow able to force people to put the theory into practice, if even a few of the soldiers still hold reservation about your claims and decide to throw down their weapons and run instead of standing firm then the rest of the formation is going to collapse anyways.

I just don't think that it's a very likely premise.

[wolflance]

It's funny until the barbs in the lang xian get hold of your clothing, drag you down and his spearman mate stabs you. It's a formation weapon used in conjunction with others; the mandarin duck formation had shields in front, langxian in second, then spears in the third:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BabIA0Kb2sU/VnUSmCSKrgI/AAAAAAAACGQ/nmEjpo3U3Tk/s1600/Mandarin_Duck_Formation.jpg
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K2liPU4Fb-Y/VnUUgyUUCoI/AAAAAAAACGc/M0j-BWc9Fx8/s1600/Mandarin_Duck_Formation_Engagement.jpg

The 2017 movie God of War (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4I0trfbGl0) has some very good examples of its use (although the spears aren't long enough) and depicts a not well known time in Chinese history - the 16th Century wako (Japanese pirates) raids on China.
I chuckled at the manga-style drawings at the start of that trailer. Seriously??

[Togath]

Possibly relevant to this thread... could anyone help me figure out some rough speeds for 1700s sailing ships?
I'm running a sea travel heavy campaign, and realizing my knowledge of how fast various sizes and types might go is... pretty dang limited. My only irl sailing experience was a 30ft modern sailboat in light winds.:smallredface:
I'm mostly trying to figure out transit times right now between islands in an archipelago(which range from about 9-19 miles apart from eachother), though areas of more wide open sea travel may come into play later.

[Brother Oni]

I chuckled at the manga-style drawings at the start of that trailer. Seriously??

Yeah, mainland Chinese movies are about 30 years behind in terms of presentation. :smallbiggrin:

Take a look at Wolf Warrior, which broke mainland box office records - it's essentially an 80s action movie done in 2015, although unlike the Expendables, it's done seriously. If you haven't figured the plot of Wolf Warrior and who's going to die after 2 minutes of their introduction, you're not paying attention.
On a more serious note, there's a unpleasant theme of Chinese jingoism running throughout Wolf Warrior, but that's beyond the remit of these boards.


Possibly relevant to this thread... could anyone help me figure out some rough speeds for 1700s sailing ships?
I'm running a sea travel heavy campaign, and realizing my knowledge of how fast various sizes and types might go is... pretty dang limited. My only irl sailing experience was a 30ft modern sailboat in light winds.:smallredface:
I'm mostly trying to figure out transit times right now between islands in an archipelago(which range from about 9-19 miles apart from eachother), though areas of more wide open sea travel may come into play later.

Depends very much on the wind and the type of ship. For a rough rule of thumb, top speed is 15 knots for a packet (message carrying) ship, 5 for merchantman.

Early 1700s Royal Navy ships averaged between between 2 and 4 knots (gentle breeze (force 3) to strong breeze (force 6)), while late 1700s ships got between 3-7 knots at the same conditions due to the introduction of copper bottoms after 1780 (the ship's hull under the waterline was plated in copper) and other improvements (link (https://voxeu.org/article/speed-under-sail-during-early-industrial-revolution)). Dutch and Spanish ships never really improved from the 17th to the 19th Century.

The HMS Victory, a 104 gun, first rate ship of the line, went into the Battle of Trafalgar at about 3 knots, and the HMS Lowestoffe, a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate, averaged 4 knots between Plymouth in England to the West Indies and back (8076 miles).

Cargo ships would travel slower than packet ships, but be careful of the 'bigger = slower' equivalence as larger ships have more sail and can thus take more advantage of the wind - the extreme clipper Sovereign of the Seas had a displacement of 2421 tons and held the sailing ship record of 22 knots for a century, while the later clipper Cutty Sark was logged at 17.5 knots, with a displacement of 2100 tons.

With regard to your transit time between two islands, it depends on the route. Is it a straight line with minimal hazards, or are there shoals and shallow seas to worry about? A slower, but lighter displacement ship could navigate these shoals and be quicker by taking a shorter route that a faster but heavier ship can't follow through. Are there prevailing winds in a particular direction, so A to B is faster than B to A for a ship under sail? Are there oared ships which would do A to B more slowly, but B to A faster?
Depending on how tall the ship is, some of the islands may be out of sight of each other (the height of the Cutty Sark's main mast is 154ft, giving a distance to horizon of ~12.5 nautical miles, if the lookout climbed to the very top), so navigation may potentially be an issue, which is a vast and complex topic, although a ship of the Cutty Sark's height wouldn't have any problems as she will always be in sight of an island.

[Galloglaich]

Yeah, mainland Chinese movies are about 30 years behind in terms of presentation. :smallbiggrin:

Take a look at Wolf Warrior, which broke mainland box office records - it's essentially an 80s action movie done in 2015, although unlike the Expendables, it's done seriously. If you haven't figured the plot of Wolf Warrior and who's going to die after 2 minutes of their introduction, you're not paying attention.
On a more serious note, there's a unpleasant theme of Chinese jingoism running throughout Wolf Warrior, but that's beyond the remit of these boards.



Depends very much on the wind and the type of ship. For a rough rule of thumb, top speed is 15 knots for a packet (message carrying) ship, 5 for merchantman.

Early 1700s Royal Navy ships averaged between between 2 and 4 knots (gentle breeze (force 3) to strong breeze (force 6)), while late 1700s ships got between 3-7 knots at the same conditions due to the introduction of copper bottoms after 1780 (the ship's hull under the waterline was plated in copper) and other improvements (link (https://voxeu.org/article/speed-under-sail-during-early-industrial-revolution)). Dutch and Spanish ships never really improved from the 17th to the 19th Century.

The HMS Victory, a 104 gun, first rate ship of the line, went into the Battle of Trafalgar at about 3 knots, and the HMS Lowestoffe, a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate, averaged 4 knots between Plymouth in England to the West Indies and back (8076 miles).

Cargo ships would travel slower than packet ships, but be careful of the 'bigger = slower' equivalence as larger ships have more sail and can thus take more advantage of the wind - the extreme clipper Sovereign of the Seas had a displacement of 2421 tons and held the sailing ship record of 22 knots for a century, while the later clipper Cutty Sark was logged at 17.5 knots, with a displacement of 2100 tons.

With regard to your transit time between two islands, it depends on the route. Is it a straight line with minimal hazards, or are there shoals and shallow seas to worry about? A slower, but lighter displacement ship could navigate these shoals and be quicker by taking a shorter route that a faster but heavier ship can't follow through. Are there prevailing winds in a particular direction, so A to B is faster than B to A for a ship under sail? Are there oared ships which would do A to B more slowly, but B to A faster?
Depending on how tall the ship is, some of the islands may be out of sight of each other (the height of the Cutty Sark's main mast is 154ft, giving a distance to horizon of ~12.5 nautical miles, if the lookout climbed to the very top), so navigation may potentially be an issue, which is a vast and complex topic, although a ship of the Cutty Sark's height wouldn't have any problems as she will always be in sight of an island.

Wow great post Brother Oni, very interesting. Do you have stats for galleys and viking style ships as well?

G

[Galloglaich]

On average, falchions don't weigh more than any other single-handed sword of the same era. The typical falchion (type 1a, see below) has a very thin cross section to make up for the large width.

Here is the full range of falchion/messer blades (the difference is in the hilt). These all weigh about the same on average, single-handed sword weights are remarkable similar throughout the medieval period and beyond- generally between 1 and 3 pounds.

I'd say your sword above is a type 5a falchion with 0 curvature.

https://pre00.deviantart.net/b81f/th/pre/f/2016/232/7/2/elmslie_typology_of_single_edged_medieval_swords_b y_shad_brooks-daenytz.jpg

Very interesting, hadn't seen this typology before thanks for posting!

That said, per whoever asked about a list of typologies, I have seen some quite complex messer and rapier typologies, I can't remember the names but I believe you can find them on Myarmoury somewhere. There is also the peterson typology for Viking / Frankish swords.

G

[Galloglaich]

What is the purpose of a two-handed sword (of the European variety, if it makes any difference)? I've seen videos of people sparring with them, and I get that the video game version of them cleaving through masses of people like a farmer reaping wheat isn't accurate, so what is the point of such a weapon? This thread can be a bit dismissive of swords, so I'm expecting a lot of "there is no point; it's merely prestige," but surely there must have been some tactical thought process behind the desire to make a two-handed sword.

I think it's a good question and we have already seen some good answers, here is my $0.02. This also pertains somewhat to the Macuhuitil question.

A European style (strait, two-edged, two handed, featuring a pommel of some kind and some kind of cross or other substantial hand protection) two handed sword serves different purposes depending on the specific sub-type, but I would break them down three ways:


The personal defense longsword, used both as a civilian and military sidearm (with many subvariants)
The cavalryman's longsword designed to be used from horseback
The true two-handed or infantry longsword, aka montante, zweihander, spadone, spada a due mani, claymore etc.


In all three cases, I agree to some extent with whoever (I lost track I'm sorry!) pointed out that a sword is a lever. What is unique about the European longsword in particular, in all three varieties listed above, is the combination of two edges with the hand protection, plus typically a sharp point as well.

The main difference between a longsword and any other kind of sword is it's utility for attacking with both edges. If you ever tried to use something shaped roughly like a two-handed sword in LARP, SCA, or some other non-historical based fighting sport or game, you probably figured out pretty quickly why most people prefer sword and shield or some kind of polearm; namely the bigger sword has the reach - if not as good as a spear- but it will get bound up on an enemy shield or weapon and then you don't know what to do.

In actual trained fencing systems, i.e. Liechtenauer, Fiore, your various Iberian traditions and so on, where you see the use of a longsword you also see extensive use of both edges. In the German / Liechtenauer system the obvious examples can be found in the master-cuts, the zwerchau and the shielhau for example, give you the ability to cut rapidly with the false edge or mutate an attack from a true edge cut to a false edge cut when it is intercepted. Many of these techniques take advantage of the cross guard and wouldn't work as reliably, due to risks to the hands, without it.

So they are taking advantage of the unique properties of a European sword. These (and only these) techniques are what really differentiate European fencing systems from say, Japanese, Chinese, Sikh or Filipino.

I agree with others who posted already in answering this query, that swords in general were very important weapons even though usually sidearms. People really tend to get stuck on this nuance. Yes the lance was the most important weapon for the knight, and yes the spear/pike/halberd/bow/crossbow/gun was the most important weapon for the infantryman. But lances broke, guns and crossbows weren't fast enough for close combat, pikes weren't good close in either, and so on.

You can see how masters like George Silver break down the roles of each weapon - many masters did that in fact if they were not always so definitive. The records of violence also tell us a tale. From reading hundreds of first-hand accounts, coroners reports, lawsuit details, city council interrogations and so on from the 15th and 16th Centuries as related to hand to hand combat, my conclusion is that in general, the main role or niche of the sword was for protection of the wielder. It was to protect you, i.e. by parrying, while threatening your enemy with a cut or a thrust. It gave you that all important fighting chance after your lance or halberd broke, or once the formation broke up, or when someone threatened you in a bar, or when robbers accosted you on the lonely forest road.

So while the dagger is (perhaps surprisingly to a modern mind) more likely, statistically to cause a persons death in a given incident of personal violence, and lances and pikes were more decisive on the battlefield, aside from wearing body armor or riding on a horse, carrying and knowing how to use a sword was your best insurance against getting cut, smashed or stabbed yourself. Swords are surprisingly effective at parrying attacks. Even relatively small ones. Sabers are also quite good for this incidentally. Most other weapons not quite as much - in part because they lack the hand protection.

What differentiates a longsword from another type of sword is a bit harder to define, but we can see certain things.


We know from period records that it was harder to learn to fight with a longsword. Contracts between towns and fencing masters for example tell us that the latter charged more and took more time to train people in longsword than for other weapons. So whatever speculation we make about what the specific advantages were, we can presume there were some or why else would people bother to undergo the extra effort.
We can also observe that elite warriors, both from the nobility and burghers or common mercenaries, used longswords as sidearms by preference to other types, during the heyday of it's use - roughly equivalent to the time plate armor was in use. So this reinforces the idea that it had 'extra' value.
A longsword has more reach than most other type of swords, but not all. Some single-handed swords also had very good reach, rapiers obviously but also some single handed arming swords or backswords, and reaching out with a single hand in an attack can in and of itself give you a bit more stretch than you can get when gripping with two hands.
However if you reach out to me to your fullest extent of reach with say, a backsword, and I parry with a longsword, I do have better leverage, I can work from the bind and stab you by plunging my point or winding; I can beat your sword aside and cut you; and I can cut with my false-edge.



Ultimately I would say that the longsword was more versatile and also usually had longer reach / range than most other swords; it also arguably conferred more of an advantage (or gave you more of a fighting chance) against weapons like spears, halberds, lances or pikes - though a shield is helpful against longer weapons too.

But shields are heavy and bulky. A sword, even a longsword can be carried on the hip.

The exceptions are the #2 and #3 from my list. The cavalry-specialist longsword (#2) is used for defense, but the balance of factors favors causing more damage - I suspect in part against horses. I.e. it's designed to give you a chance to parry spear or lance thrusts too, but mainly to cause serious wounds to your enemies. These swords tend to be heavier and more formidable than ordinary longswords.

The #2 longsword, the montante or true two-hander, has one specific role as stated by many of the fencing manuals, one which you can see in period art, as well as another one I am just guessing at. The first role you see mentioned ,for example in most of the Iberian montante manuals, is for "when few must contend with many". The montante can be used to fight off crowds of enemies -and they train extensively on how to do that which is one of the cool things about the Iberian manuals in particular- and conversely it can be used to attack VIP's.

We also do have some evidence that big two handed swords were used against pikes. Most recently I saw depictions of this in a 16th Century Scottish book I had the good fortune to be able to look at a bit while doing a lecture in Amherst last year.

The third type relates to the Macuhuitil discussion - namely the idea of horse-killing. A big zweihander is somewhat overlkill for attacking a person. No, it sill probably won't cut through armor, but it will hack through a hell of a lot of meat and bone. And spear hafts and shields and so on. But I suspect a single cut from a zweihander will probably disable a horse, cut off it's leg, hack half (or all) of it's head off etc.

And the equivalent weapons in China, Korea and Japan - the maio dao, nodachi / odachi, and zhanmadao etc. were closely associated with killing horses.

The Zhanmadao (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhanmadao) literally means "horse killing sword" if I understand correctly. And this makes sense to me.

Even a mortally wounded horse can still carry its rider to safety, but a horse with a decapitated leg or half it's head sheared off cannot.
Horses in Europe were usually at least in part protected by textile armor, I suspect that is also the case in many other parts of the world. A really big sword like a six foot zweihander can probably more easily shear through textile armor than a smaller weapon.

Now do I think a wood and obsidian macuhuitil or equivalent weapon could literally hack a horses head clean off? Probably not, but I can easily see how the Spanish, for whom their horses were a very rare and extremely valuable weapon, would be very concerned about any weapon which could quickly disable one of their horses and make immediate note of this potential once observed.

But this might also confer some extra 'authority' on a small forlorn hope of two-handed sword wielding dopllesoldners on some 15th Century battlefield in Europe - you may think twice about trying to ride them down if you know they can kill your horse with one stroke.

I think this is also incidentally one of the main roles of the heavier types of European crossbow.

G

[Knaight]

Now do I think a wood and obsidian macuhuitil or equivalent weapon could literally hack a horses head clean off? Probably not, but I can easily see how the Spanish, for whom their horses were a very rare and extremely valuable weapon, would be very concerned about any weapon which could quickly disable one of their horses and make immediate note of this potential once observed.

Hacking the head clean off is also pretty excessive - it's not like cutting all the way through just the lowest third of the neck isn't going to kill the horse pretty quickly.

[Galloglaich]

Hi Galloglaich,

I assure you that I'm not confused, I haven't been moving goalposts to win an argument, I haven't been over-relying on primary sources or modern testing, and I'm not the one who posted a youtube video about a suit of armor made at Greenwich, England in 1588 for Lord Compton (https://youtu.be/YNhh1yDpOEk?t=23m6s) (**** quality, according to Alan Williams), which features two overlapping breastplates designed specifically to improve protection against firearms rather than to increase flexibility, and then began implying that this test provides rock-solid proof for your assumptions about armor in the 15th century.

To be absolutely clear, I do not think you are dumb. I think you are an extremely reasonable and well-informed individual who I have learned a lot from over the years, which is why I've kept coming back to try to better explain some of my main points rather than giving up to do something else because I hate typing and it's just a stupid internet argument.


Rrgg - I appreciate your friendly gesture in this post, I still disagree with you about what we were discussing but I'll get back to that.

I haven't replied in a while simply because real life pulled me away from the computer for a few days. Does that sometimes! In fact whenever these conversations seem to heat up I am really in a bad position to keep up. This one started when I was in Italy and then continued through some busy weeks for me, so I just have to quit while I'm ahead (or think I am). Ultimately it's one of those "Half way wrong" vs. "Half way right" conversations that can go on forever.

My general point, aside from the specifics which I think we beat to death (at some point, nobody else is reading the argument any more right?) is that even though medieval history is much harder to understand than Early Modern, it's worth the effort. I do think you were letting some concepts from the modern era cloud your understanding of the earlier one, because the earlier just doesn't fit.

To understand the 14th or 15th Century you do have to ditch your modern perceptions on almost everything especially for Late Medieval, forget pretty much everything you learned in school, picked up from RPG's and video games, and saw on TV or in movies, and you have to move beyond England and France, but it's really rewarding to do so and even the Early Modern stuff will make a lot more sense since medieval culture, political and economic systems and military systems took decades, in some cases centuries to wind down.

For me, learning a bit about the Late medieval world was extremely humbling and awe inspiring but also very rewarding. It took me ten years to get even a basic, marginal toe-hold on it (I cannot honestly claim to be an expert) but I and others have made a lot of effort to make this process easier for others with similar interests. The internet is not purely a benign thing and I am no techno-utopian, but for research it has given us some really fantastic gifts. The time you spend reading turgid military manuals from the 1600's could lead you pretty deep into this (IMHO) much more rewarding and interesting world. And I would just like to recommend it, you clearly have the chops to find your way there.

G

[Galloglaich]

Hacking the head clean off is also pretty excessive - it's not like cutting all the way through just the lowest third of the neck isn't going to kill the horse pretty quickly.

Yes exactly. All you have to do is cause a horrible wound of the types which give ER physicians nightmares. A four foot longsword can do that pretty easily to a human; a six foot sword can (I suspect) easily do that to a horse.

I think maybe this is part of the reason for falchions too.

G

[Brother Oni]

Wow great post Brother Oni, very interesting. Do you have stats for galleys and viking style ships as well?

I know of a replica viking ship hitting 14 knots, although it wasn't the smoothest of voyages to say the least: link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bTkmG5b-VQ).
They go faster under sail than with oars, but if the wind isn't great they can either supplement or replace it entirely, keeping up their average speed. On average, they'd normally do 5-8 knots; the Viking Ship Museum in Denmark (https://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/) has recovered 6 ships that had been scuttled to block a port circa 1070:


Skuldelev 1. Ocean-going trader, dated to ca. 1030. Crew: 6-8. Average speed: 5-7 kts. Top speed: 13 kts.
Skuldelev 2. Great longship, 1042. Crew: 65-70. Avg speed: 6-8 kts. Top speed: 13-17 kts.
Skuldelev 3. Coastal trader, ca. 1040. Crew: 5-8. Avg speed: 4-5 kts. Top speed: 8-10 kts.
Skuldelev 5. Small longship, ca. 1030. Crew: 30. Avg speed: 6-7 kts. Top speed: 15 kts.
Skuldelev 6. Fishing vessel, ca. 1030. Crew: 5-15. Avg speed: 4-5 kts. Top speed: 9-12 kts.

If a monk on the shore spotted the Skuldelev 2 at the horizon (~2.5 nautical miles), with its top speed and shallow draft, the vikings could have boots on the ground in as little as 9 minutes.
As the source I found said (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2s2cdu/roughly_how_fast_was_a_viking_longboat_able_to/), not a good day to be a monk.

I wasn't entirely sure what you meant by galley (ancient or medieval), but from previous threads, I think you meant ancient as you're well versed in medieval ones. I found this link on ancient ships (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/TAPA/82/Speed_under_Sail_of_Ancient_Ships*.html); the TL,DR is 1-3 knots average under unfavourable winds, 3-5 average under favourable ones. Bear in mind that these ships are intended for the Mediterranean so can't handle the stronger winds and rougher conditions you'd typically see out in the Atlantic, without hugging the coast for dear life.

[Vinyadan]

For something completely different: I was reading about the battle of Delium in 424, which saw Thebes vs Athens within the Peloponnesian War. There are a couple of interesting things. One is that an elite group fielded by the Thebans, possibly the Sacred Band or its precursor, was composed of "charioteers and footmen", the actual term for footmen meaning "those who run beside the chariot/accompany it". It probably was the retention of a name from times when chariots were still a thing in the military, and possibly "charioteers" referred to a social class of people who once could have afforded to fight on a chariot.

The more interesting fact is that the Thebans had a flamethrower.


Thuc. 4.100
Meanwhile the Boeotians at once sent for darters and slingers from the Malian gulf, and with two thousand Corinthian heavy infantry who had joined them after the battle, the Peloponnesian garrison which had evacuated Nisaea, and some Megarians with them, marched against Delium, and attacked the fort, and after divers efforts finally succeeded in taking it by an engine of the following description. [2] They sawed in two and scooped out a great beam from end to end, and fitting it nicely together again like a pipe, hung by chains a cauldron at one extremity, with which communicated an iron tube projecting from the beam, which was itself in great part plated with iron. [3] This they brought up from a distance upon carts to the part of the wall principally composed of vines and timber, and when it was near, inserted huge bellows into their end of the beam and blew with them. [4] The blast passing closely confined into the cauldron, which was filled with lighted coals, sulphur and pitch, made a great blaze, and set fire to the wall, which soon became untenable for its defenders, who left it and fled; and in this way the fort was taken. [5] Of the garrison some were killed and two hundred made prisoners; most of the rest got on board their ships and returned home.

[Haighus]

Very interesting, hadn't seen this typology before thanks for posting!

That said, per whoever asked about a list of typologies, I have seen some quite complex messer and rapier typologies, I can't remember the names but I believe you can find them on Myarmoury somewhere. There is also the peterson typology for Viking / Frankish swords.

G

It is the Elmslie typology for categorising falchions and messers, and is pretty recent on the scene, although James Elmslie has been compiling the research for years if I remember correctly. The pommel classifications for the falchions and the crossguards are drawn from the Oakeshotte typology I believe, as there is not really any difference.

The image above was produced by Shadiversity in partnership with Elmslie, as a nice image to promote the research and typology. I think the series of videos Shad produced on this were some of his very best, as it is based upon the work of an expert who has been working on this area for an extended period.

The take-home point is that falchions and messers are functionally the same weapon, the only real difference is how the blade is hilted (sword hilt or knife hilt). Almost all of the blade types above can be found on either a falchion or a messer hilt somewhere in actual examples or artwork. I think the type 1 blades are the exception, and some of those are only found depicted in artwork as falchions, with no surviving examples at all to date.


(at some point, nobody else is reading the argument any more right?)
G

Wrong ;) I actually find the arguments some of the most interesting discussions in this thread, because dissenting, scientific approaches to topics brings real progress and reasoning, which an observer reading can learn a lot from, and form their own opinions somewhere on the spectrum presented.

The fact a lot of primary and archaelogical sources are dredged up in such discussions is also very helpful.


Wow great post Brother Oni, very interesting. Do you have stats for galleys and viking style ships as well?

G

I agree, this is interesting data, and great for crafting realistic military campaigns.

Also interesting to note how much slower ancient galleys are than viking longships, which are essentially the same principle (lightweight rowed-and-sailed ship), although obviously different shapes, with different requirements and underlying tech levels. How fast are medieval galleys?

[Max_Killjoy]

For something completely different: I was reading about the battle of Delium in 424, which saw Thebes vs Athens within the Peloponnesian War. There are a couple of interesting things. One is that an elite group fielded by the Thebans, possibly the Sacred Band or its precursor, was composed of "charioteers and footmen", the actual term for footmen meaning "those who run beside the chariot/accompany it". It probably was the retention of a name from times when chariots were still a thing in the military, and possibly "charioteers" referred to a social class of people who once could have afforded to fight on a chariot.

The more interesting fact is that the Thebans had a flamethrower.

I've seen that tested on some show, I'll see if I can find the reference at least.


http://kotsanas.com/photo/1401008-01.jpg

[wolflance]

Yes exactly. All you have to do is cause a horrible wound of the types which give ER physicians nightmares. A four foot longsword can do that pretty easily to a human; a six foot sword can (I suspect) easily do that to a horse.

I think maybe this is part of the reason for falchions too.

G
Actually the best, sure-fire way to kill a horse is to cut its leg/legs. Took the cavalry immediately out of action, and leg wound is usually fatal to the horse.

[Gnoman]

Early 1700s Royal Navy ships averaged between between 2 and 4 knots (gentle breeze (force 3) to strong breeze (force 6)), while late 1700s ships got between 3-7 knots at the same conditions due to the introduction of copper bottoms after 1780 (the ship's hull under the waterline was plated in copper) and other improvements (link (https://voxeu.org/article/speed-under-sail-during-early-industrial-revolution)).


Note that this figures probably assume a clean bottom. The primary improvement caused by a coppered bottom is that copper is toxic to most forms of sea life, which prevents said sea life from growing on the ship and slowing it down.

[Deepbluediver]

Actually the best, sure-fire way to kill a horse is to cut its leg/legs. Took the cavalry immediately out of action, and leg wound is usually fatal to the horse.
Do you mean it was immediately fatal, or just that the horse was probably crippled for life so it was EFFECTIVELY fatal? I thought I read somewhere that horses, and lots of creatures in fact, don't heal the way humans do. We've got overactive scar-tissue, self-strengthening bones, and of course the ability to sit still for 6 weeks while someone else takes care of us.
So a horse breaking it's leg wasn't necessarily a death-sentence, it's just that if you spent months nursing it back to health, it MIGHT someday be able to walk again, but it would never run, and therefore it wasn't worth the effort.

I could be wrong, though.



Note that this figures probably assume a clean bottom. The primary improvement caused by a coppered bottom is that copper is toxic to most forms of sea life, which prevents said sea life from growing on the ship and slowing it down.
How often did it have to be replaced? I'm pretty sure that salt-water corrodes copper even faster than it does iron.
Also, how thick, approximately, was a copper-bottom? I'm picturing thin sheets almost like aluminum-foil but was it thick enough to add significantly to the weight of the vessel?

[Max_Killjoy]

How often did it have to be replaced? I'm pretty sure that salt-water corrodes copper even faster than it does iron.
Also, how thick, approximately, was a copper-bottom? I'm picturing thin sheets almost like aluminum-foil but was it thick enough to add significantly to the weight of the vessel?


Copper forms that green patina layer instead of a flaky rust, and that protects the metal from further corrosion instead of exposing more metal underneath.

The sheets were (apocryphally?) thick enough that they stopped the American revolutionaries' "Turtle" submarine from drilling into the wood to attach a bomb to the bottom of a British ship in NY harbor.

[wolflance]

Do you mean it was immediately fatal, or just that the horse was probably crippled for life so it was EFFECTIVELY fatal? I thought I read somewhere that horses, and lots of creatures in fact, don't heal the way humans do. We've got overactive scar-tissue, self-strengthening bones, and of course the ability to sit still for 6 weeks while someone else takes care of us.
So a horse breaking it's leg wasn't necessarily a death-sentence, it's just that if you spent months nursing it back to health, it MIGHT someday be able to walk again, but it would never run, and therefore it wasn't worth the effort.

I could be wrong, though.
It is not immediately fatal but the horse will likely die from it eventually (instead of crippled for life like a human with leg injuries). With modern medical technology, it is possible to heal *SOME* horse leg injuries, but most horses are still put to sleep after leg injuries even today (as the alternative might be a slow and agonizing death).

Pre-modern people/horses had no such luxury of modern medicals, and intentional injury caused by hostile humans would likely be the not-treatable kind (no horse can survive having one of its legs chopped off, for example).

So a horse might be able to remain combat-effective even after you shoot it with multiple arrows or even musket shots (even if it is fatally woulded in the process). But an injured leg? One less cavalry to worry about.



"so long as they held firm" being the key phrase here. If you went back in time to the early 17th century how are you going to convince anyone that a thin line of unarmored infantry holding short muskets and bayonets would be enough against cavalry when they have many examples of even solid pike squares being broken up by cavalry charges? Even if you were somehow able to force people to put the theory into practice, if even a few of the soldiers still hold reservation about your claims and decide to throw down their weapons and run instead of standing firm then the rest of the formation is going to collapse anyways.

I just don't think that it's a very likely premise.
Additionally, even if they DID held firm with utmost conviction, unarmored infantry with bayonets had a snowball's chance against the kind of charge performed by 16-17th century cavalry like winged hussars or demi-lancers. To begin with, a musket + bayonet is way too short compared to a cavalry lance, and the troops lacked (munition) breastplate to stop the lance strike.

(Well, if you shoot them with more advanced 19th century musketry/musket tactics until the cavalry broke before completing the charge, that'd be another story...)

[VoxRationis]

G

Thank you very much.

[Brother Oni]

How fast are medieval galleys?

From what I can find, it's 3-4 knots on average, but I can't verify that value. Galloglaich is our expert on medieval galleys operating in the Baltic.


Also, how thick, approximately, was a copper-bottom? I'm picturing thin sheets almost like aluminum-foil but was it thick enough to add significantly to the weight of the vessel?

As Max_Killjoy said, copper forms a protective layer of verdigris, so further corrosion can't happen to the metal underneath.

It took 14 tons of copper to sheathe a 74 gun third rate ship of the line, which isn't that much compared to a ship's displacement; the HMS Audacious (https://www.militaryfactory.com/ships/detail.asp?ship_id=HMS-Audacious-1785) displaced 1625 tons under load.

Using her as a guide and some very rough modelling of the hull as the arc of a chord, with her length of 168 feet, a beam of 46.8 feet and draught of 19.8 feet (51.21m, 14.26m, 6.04m), you have 1035m2 to cover. Copper has a density of 8.96 g/cm3, so 14 tons (14.2247 tonnes) would cover that area to a depth of ~0.15cm, so thin, but still equivalent to 1mm plate harness. Note that it was probably a bit thicker than that as I based my measurements on the ship being a uniform half cylinder throughout, based on its widest point.

This image of the Cutty Sark demonstrates what a hull actually looks like although with Muntz metal (a copper/zinc alloy) for sheathing (note the visible dents in the metal).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Cutty_Sark_stern.jpg


The sheets were (apocryphally?) thick enough that they stopped the American revolutionaries' "Turtle" submarine from drilling into the wood to attach a bomb to the bottom of a British ship in NY harbor.

From reading up on the operation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(submersible)), it looks like the pilot accidentally tried to drill through a much thicker iron hinge for the ship's rudder, then fatigue and the rising CO2 left him unable to complete the operation on a different spot on the hull.

[Kiero]

Going further back, the ancient trieres/trireme were faster than the galleys reported above at sprint speed. And that's just based on half-trained modern crews in the reconstruction, Olympias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympias_(trireme)).

Experienced crews could probably manage faster, but the modern ones managed 9 knots at full output, and 2 knots at a more sustainable pace. They estimate that a trireme might be able to manage over 16 knots (!) at ramming speed.

Though I should add, an ancient galley was far less seaworthy than the medieval ones, being designed only for relatively gentle Mediterranean voyages.

[Haighus]

It is not immediately fatal but the horse will likely die from it eventually (instead of crippled for life like a human with leg injuries). With modern medical technology, it is possible to heal *SOME* horse leg injuries, but most horses are still put to sleep after leg injuries even today (as the alternative might be a slow and agonizing death).

Pre-modern people/horses had no such luxury of modern medicals, and intentional injury caused by hostile humans would likely be the not-treatable kind (no horse can survive having one of its legs chopped off, for example).

So a horse might be able to remain combat-effective even after you shoot it with multiple arrows or even musket shots (even if it is fatally woulded in the process). But an injured leg? One less cavalry to worry about.
I think a lot of horses are put down today because of economic reasons, rather than the leg fracture being untreatable. Nursing a horse back to health with a broken leg is expensive and requires specialist input, which is sadly not often affordable, desirable (for industries like racing), or even available. So euthanasia is the next best option :(

Like you say though, this was definitely not an option with pre-modern medicine. Horses legs are really vulnerable. A lot of modern horses are given "boots" (essentially lower leg guards) to stop them from laming themselves by kicking their own legs! This usually puts the horse out of action for a week or two.

Incidentally, I think a lot of people underestimate just how bad an injury breaking a leg is. Even for a human, fracturing a femur is bad news and can be lethal, and indeed does kill many elderly folk. Femurs especially are large, living structures with a massive blood supply, and also close to some major arteries that can be damaged by bone fragments, the femoral artery in particular. Breaking a fibula is comparatively ok, but a tibial fracture can be nasty too, being another large bone.


Additionally, even if they DID held firm with utmost conviction, unarmored infantry with bayonets had a snowball's chance against the kind of charge performed by 16-17th century cavalry like winged hussars or demi-lancers. To begin with, a musket + bayonet is way too short compared to a cavalry lance, and the troops lacked (munition) breastplate to stop the lance strike.

(Well, if you shoot them with more advanced 19th century musketry/musket tactics until the cavalry broke before completing the charge, that'd be another story...)

Yeah, I agree with this.

[Max_Killjoy]

From reading up on the operation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(submersible)), it looks like the pilot accidentally tried to drill through a much thicker iron hinge for the ship#s rudder, then fatigue and the rising CO2 left him unable to complete the operation on a different spot on the hull.


Ah ah! That makes much more sense.

[Mike_G]

Additionally, even if they DID held firm with utmost conviction, unarmored infantry with bayonets had a snowball's chance against the kind of charge performed by 16-17th century cavalry like winged hussars or demi-lancers. To begin with, a musket + bayonet is way too short compared to a cavalry lance, and the troops lacked (munition) breastplate to stop the lance strike.

(Well, if you shoot them with more advanced 19th century musketry/musket tactics until the cavalry broke before completing the charge, that'd be another story...)

That's the thing. A bayonet on a musket isn't as good as a pike in melee, but the whole point of the bayonet is to allow you to have more shooters. Given 100 infantry, I'd rather have all 100 men able to fire and use the bayonet than 20 men able to fire protected by 80 pikemen.

I'm not convinced that a 16th century cavalry charge would break a Napoleonic square or even line if it held. Yeah, the lance has reach, but you're still asking a horse to run into three ranks of tightly packed men with pointy objects. That's not even taking into account the greater firepower of 18th century armies.

I haven't read many accounts of cavalry actually crashing into formed infantry and beating them in melee. Plenty of times the infantry broke and got run down, but mostly if they held, the cavalry broke off before contact.

[Kiero]

That's the thing. A bayonet on a musket isn't as good as a pike in melee, but the whole point of the bayonet is too allow you to have more shooters. Given 100 infantry, I'd rather have all 100 men able to fire and use the bayonet than 20 men able to fire protected by 80 pikemen.

Though I would say the standard 3-rank firing line most nations used meant that the rear rank probably couldn't fire.


I'm not convinced that a 16th century cavalry charge would break a Napoleonic square or even line if it held. Yeah, the lance has reach, but you're still asking a horse to run into three ranks of tightly packed men with pointy objects. That's not even taking into account the greater firepower of 18th century armies.

I haven't read many accounts of cavalry actually crashing into formed infantry and beating them in melee. Plenty of times the infantry broke and got run down, but mostly if they held, the cavalry broke off before contact.

Indeed, in the Napoleonic era, horses wouldn't charge into a wall of spikes, no matter how long they were. One of the few examples of a formed square being broken I've read about was at the battle of Garcia Hernandez (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Garc%C3%ADa_Hern%C3%A1ndez).

The article lists the following reasons why formed infantry were beaten in the Napoleonic era (and it was rare):

the infantry were of poor quality
the infantry were tired, disorganized or discouraged
it was raining, making it difficult for the infantry to fire effectively
the infantry fired a poorly aimed volley
the infantry waited too long to fire


The raining one was relevant to the battle of Albuera (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Albuera) (where the general in command famously disarmed a Polish lancer bare-handed). The lancers came out of a squall of rain right into his command staff and Colborne's brigade, and it was too wet for them to be able to respond.

[Haighus]

If you can't use a heavy cavalry unit armed with lances to force it's way into infantry, then why not just give them sabers and pistols, and use them as medium/light cavalry? Harquebusiers or (16th/17th century) cuirassiers/reiters/pistoliers can do all the roles expected of cavalry otherwise, yet lance-armed units like the gendarmes and winged hussars considered to be militarily viable almost throughout the period of pike and shot. They became increasingly rare, but they must've had a role other than harrassment and opportunistic charges against wavering troops.

Compared to a lance, swords/sabers are generally better in cavalry-vs-cavalry engagements. They are better against fleeing infantry, and they are better for when the cavalry gets bogged down and is forced to fight its way from a melee. Lances have basically two effective situations- charging into formed opponents, and hitting infantry who lie down to avoid sabers as the cavalry passes. Lances are difficult to use and train in, and any cavalryman would want to train in using a sword too, as it is their back-up weapon for melees. If the lance provides very little benefit, why bother investing so much time and effort into training it? May as well just practice fencing more.

Horses can be trained to be very aggressive and contribute to the combat itself, and they can be trained to charge into things that hurt them. In addition, you can restrict the view of the horse to only include that which is useful- the ground in front of where the horse is running- a lot of plate barding seems to restrict the forward view of the horse, so they may not know exactly what they are charging into anyway.

I think this was combined with long lances, to kill the first row or two of defending pointy-sticks before the cavalry engages and drop the points, and/or with barding to protect the horses from further points/survivors to allow heavy cavalry to engage and actually push into disciplined, formed infantry when such a thing was a desirable tactic. Charges were not generally conducted at a full gallop on the point of impact, so the horse still has a lot of control to batter its way into the infantry and force through a gap. Horses bite and kick and trample and stamp and body-check other horses and humans, and can be trained to emphasise this. Earlier horses were also smaller, and consequently much more balanced and manouevrable, and are quite capable of making rapid adjustments in direction, including moving to the side of a pike. There is obviously only a small amount of lee-way in doing this when riding knee-to-knee, but there is some.

Modern polo has good examples of horses engaging messily, and most of the prohibited angles of approach are because of the damage a horse can do to another- T-boning for example is noted as an effective tactic for cavalry units to use when attacking other cavalry, and is prohibited in polo.

This clearly became a less viable tactic as time went on, and I think it is likely due to the same reasons heavily armoured infantry became less common- it is an expensive concentration of resources to create such a unit, especially in large numbers as armies continued to increase in size, and losses would be difficult to replace. Once cannons become as ubiquitous and mobile as they did by Napoleonic battlefields, you could lose a lot of invested resources from a single volley, long before such an expensive unit was able to reach and potentially break a square. Light cavalry was simply easier to replace, yet still did the vast majority of the functions required of cavalry well.

I am referring to basically all Napoleonic cavalry as light cavalry, as it was generally not in the same class as earlier heavy cavalry. Edit: see Kiero's comment below, this should really be light and medium cavalry.

[Haighus]

As a related note- I was reading through a thread discussing cavalry charges on the Schola forum, and it had these interesting images of what is probably a warhorse being trained to fight humans in a melee. It is from the Romance of Alexander, c.1340.

http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=658

http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=661

http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=660


The thread (http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16925&hilit=cavalry+charge) also had some other interesting examples of horses attacking people/horses, in one case including a normally placid mare biting the opponent in a mounted duel completely unbidden and untrained. Apparently the mare in question is usually very unaggressive, but quickly cottoned on to the game being "attack the other rider".

Horses themselves are definitely a weapon in their own right!

[Kiero]

This clearly became a less viable tactic as time went on, and I think it is likely due to the same reasons heavily armoured infantry became less common- it is an expensive concentration of resources to create such a unit, especially in large numbers as armies continued to increase in size, and losses would be difficult to replace. Once cannons become as ubiquitous and mobile as they did by Napoleonic battlefields, you could lose a lot of invested resources from a single volley, long before such an expensive unit was able to reach and potentially break a square. Light cavalry was simply easier to replace, yet still did the vast majority of the functions required of cavalry well.

I am referring to basically all Napoleonic cavalry as light cavalry, as it was generally not in the same class as earlier heavy cavalry.

Agreed, I think the advent of both rapid-firing infantry (in relative terms) and ubiquitous artillery made the investment in warhorses no longer viable in the Napoleonic era. There are so many accounts of generals who fight battles having so many mounts killed under them as they do their business, they wouldn't be so frivolous if each one was an extremely expensive and highly-trained warhorse.

Though I'd call them light and medium, it's meaningless to say a hussar is the same as a cuirassier, when they have different kinds of horse as well as different equipment and roles in battle.

[Haighus]

Agreed, I think the advent of both rapid-firing infantry (in relative terms) and ubiquitous artillery made the investment in warhorses no longer viable in the Napoleonic era. There are so many accounts of generals who fight battles having so many mounts killed under them as they do their business, they wouldn't be so frivolous if each one was an extremely expensive and highly-trained warhorse.

Though I'd call them light and medium, it's meaningless to say a hussar is the same as a cuirassier, when they have different kinds of horse as well as different equipment and roles in battle.
Good point on light vs medium. I should probably have said lighter cavalry.

French cuirassiers were probably one of the few units that could be considered "true" heavy cavalry to be honest, they were real bruisers. I wonder why they didn't use a lance, because their primary sword functioned as a short one.

[Kiero]

Moved to it's own thread.

[wolflance]

That's the thing. A bayonet on a musket isn't as good as a pike in melee, but the whole point of the bayonet is to allow you to have more shooters. Given 100 infantry, I'd rather have all 100 men able to fire and use the bayonet than 20 men able to fire protected by 80 pikemen.

I'm not convinced that a 16th century cavalry charge would break a Napoleonic square or even line if it held. Yeah, the lance has reach, but you're still asking a horse to run into three ranks of tightly packed men with pointy objects. That's not even taking into account the greater firepower of 18th century armies.

I haven't read many accounts of cavalry actually crashing into formed infantry and beating them in melee. Plenty of times the infantry broke and got run down, but mostly if they held, the cavalry broke off before contact.
Besides the answers others have given, a longer lance confers the cavalry two advantages over shorter infantry spear or bayonet on musket:

1) It allows the cavalry to kill the infantry before said infantry could harm his horse. This one should be obvious.
2) It allows the cavalry charge to connect earlier. As in, you already completed your charge, poked your target, and delivered the shock before your horse feels threatened by that wall of pointy objects and broke off (or, your horse doesn't need to 'run into' a wall of pointy objects, it just need to run close enough).

Additionally, having armor on horse *MAY* add to its willingness to charge into dangerous objects.

In the Napoleonic era, there were apparently cavalry unit of first rank lancer followed by saber cavalry, although I don't know how true or successful was that.

[Vinyadan]

Horses biting aren't unusual. It happens in the stable, too. I know two people who were bitten by horses.

Interesting images. Because the rein really is in the hand of two of the men, I agree on reading them as training (or performing), whether for show or war, that's hard to tell. Otherwise, I'd have read them as funny scene of men fencing with a horse. I wonder what sort of padding they had, however. A kick from a horse is a big deal. If it was a show, maybe that was the point: seeing something extremely dangerous handled nonchalantly.

Interestingly, death by horsekick also is an important moment in the science of statistics. Wikipedia:


In 1898 [Ladislaus Bortkiewicz] published a book about the Poisson distribution, titled The Law of Small Numbers.[1] In this book he first noted that events with low frequency in a large population follow a Poisson distribution even when the probabilities of the events varied. It was that book that made the Prussian horse-kicking data famous. The data gave the number of soldiers killed by being kicked by a horse each year in each of 14 cavalry corps over a 20-year period. Bortkiewicz showed that those numbers followed a Poisson distribution.

Also, kilts with full-leg socks, man.

[rrgg]

My general point, aside from the specifics which I think we beat to death (at some point, nobody else is reading the argument any more right?) is that even though medieval history is much harder to understand than Early Modern, it's worth the effort. I do think you were letting some concepts from the modern era cloud your understanding of the earlier one, because the earlier just doesn't fit.

To understand the 14th or 15th Century you do have to ditch your modern perceptions on almost everything especially for Late Medieval, forget pretty much everything you learned in school, picked up from RPG's and video games, and saw on TV or in movies, and you have to move beyond England and France, but it's really rewarding to do so and even the Early Modern stuff will make a lot more sense since medieval culture, political and economic systems and military systems took decades, in some cases centuries to wind down.

For me, learning a bit about the Late medieval world was extremely humbling and awe inspiring but also very rewarding. It took me ten years to get even a basic, marginal toe-hold on it (I cannot honestly claim to be an expert) but I and others have made a lot of effort to make this process easier for others with similar interests. The internet is not purely a benign thing and I am no techno-utopian, but for research it has given us some really fantastic gifts. The time you spend reading turgid military manuals from the 1600's could lead you pretty deep into this (IMHO) much more rewarding and interesting world. And I would just like to recommend it, you clearly have the chops to find your way there.

G

Thanks. Yeah, you're definitely more knowledgeable about about the late medieval period and regions outside of western Europe than I am.

I guess what mainly set me off is that I don't really like the characterization of 16th and 17th soldiers as simple, unthinking automatons, relied entirely on quantity over quality compared to the armies that came before or after, were too dumb to figure out how to use bayonets and rifles (rifles were a late medieval invention, weren't they?), or were equipped and trained to be as cheap and expendable as possible as the result of some "cold calculus" on the part of mustace-twirling centralized states. I know this doesn't quite fit with a lot of narratives about the development of modern states, but I think that the evidence can back this up and at this point it's pretty much a hill I'm willing to die on, so it probably is for the best if we agree to disagree here.

Regarding the swiss and medieval training however, in retrospect I think the problem was more that your explaination seemed to make too much sense to me :smallwink:. A bad habit I've picked up while reading is that whenever I come across an explanation so simple that even I can understand it, it immediately throws up red flags and I start looking further details. If I can figure out that you can create really good soldiers with some combination of a sense of community, warlike games, and frequent warfare, then why couldn't the Duke of Burgundy also figure out the secret? Why couldn't any of the military models copied directly from the swiss or even developed by swiss captains figure it out? I realize that an internet forum isn't really the best format for long-form essays or going into detail about every single factor at play however. So it probably is that I'm wrong and I'd have to do more reading myself until I've weeded out other possibilities or found enough interwoven elements working with and against each other that I don't understand exactly what happened anymore.

[Haighus]

Horses biting aren't unusual. It happens in the stable, too. I know two people who were bitten by horses.
Absolutely, I've been snapped at by horses. They are also quite willing to stand on toes too, or start throwing their weight around if they believe they are in the dominant position. The trick is to appear like you are the dominant one in the relationship.


Interesting images. Because the rein really is in the hand of two of the men, I agree on reading them as training (or performing), whether for show or war, that's hard to tell. Otherwise, I'd have read them as funny scene of men fencing with a horse. I wonder what sort of padding they had, however. A kick from a horse is a big deal. If it was a show, maybe that was the point: seeing something extremely dangerous handled nonchalantly.

Interestingly, death by horsekick also is an important moment in the science of statistics. Wikipedia:



Also, kilts with full-leg socks, man.
Heh, high fashion :smallwink:

Apparently the manuscript they come from shows both military training/practice scenes and pleasure/festival scenes, just to make it more confusing! However, some of the comments I have read on this note that the horses are mostly wearing military saddles of the era, rather than simple riding saddles used outside of war, so they are most likely training the horses for military purposes.

The shield seems to be the main protection- it looks like the trainer is being careful to remain mostly out of reach though?

[Mike_G]

Besides the answers others have given, a longer lance confers the cavalry two advantages over shorter infantry spear or bayonet on musket:

1) It allows the cavalry to kill the infantry before said infantry could harm his horse. This one should be obvious.


2) It allows the cavalry charge to connect earlier. As in, you already completed your charge, poked your target, and delivered the shock before your horse feels threatened by that wall of pointy objects and broke off (or, your horse doesn't need to 'run into' a wall of pointy objects, it just need to run close enough).

Additionally, having armor on horse *MAY* add to its willingness to charge into dangerous objects.

In the Napoleonic era, there were apparently cavalry unit of first rank lancer followed by saber cavalry, although I don't know how true or successful was that.

The whole raison d'etre of a bayonet to to give the soldier a pointy thing and still allow him to shoot the horse. Hard to do with a pike.

If all my men can shoot the horses, as opposed to 10-20% of my men, that greatly enhances the chance of your cavalry charge coming to nought. Probably just use the bayonets to finish off the lancers who are pinned under the dead mounts.

Napoleon had lancers. They didn't break a lot of squares. Nor did the armored Cuirassiers on big heavy horses.

[Haighus]

The whole raison d'etre of a bayonet to to give the soldier a pointy thing and still allow him to shoot the horse. Hard to do with a pike.

If all my men can shoot the horses, as opposed to 10-20% of my men, that greatly enhances the chance of your cavalry charge coming to nought. Probably just use the bayonets to finish off the lancers who are pinned under the dead mounts.

Napoleon had lancers. They didn't break a lot of squares. Nor did the armored Cuirassiers on big heavy horses.

Some of this clearly doesn't work. We know cavalry charged at squares, and wheeled away at the last moment, and remained in a combat effective state. This means the casualties from shooting were generally not huge.

In addition, everyone decided it was a good idea to go into a square to defend from cavalry, and that remaining in line was a bad idea. This suggests that cavalry could not be stopped by fire alone, and that a specific, unflankable, dense formation was required to counter cavalry. Further to this, a square can only bring to bear a quarter of the battalion to fire on a unit at any one time, unless the cavalry is targeting a corner and riding at an angle two sides can aim at obliquely. This is also assuming everyone on a side can shoot, but the ranks were often 4 men deep, so likely the rear two ranks couldn't easily shoot. Clearly, they thought 4 ranks was necessary to deter determined cavalry. So a unit of shot hidden in a mass of pikes is not bringing a whole lot less fire against cavalry than a square where three sides are facing the wrong way.

I think the advantage of having more shot is mainly against infantry, where a line of musketeers is going to bring a lot more firepower to bear against a block of pikeman with shot.

Napoleonic lancers were quite different to earlier lancer cavalry (no armour, fairly light, short lances), and even the cuirassiers of this time were far less armoured than earlier heavy cavalry. They also didn't use lances. Cavalry in this period just wasn't set up for forcing infantry in the same way.

In addition, what I was reading on this subject suggest the best late medieval and early modern heavy cavalry horses were fairly small, not big, and therefore very compact and dense in their power, yet still agile and flexible. Large horses apparently lose a lot of flexibility and responsiveness over smaller horses. I wouldn't be surprised if this had a big impact in allowing them to pentrate through dense groups of people. It would only have a limited affect on avoiding pointy sticks thrust at them, but I mean in terms of physically fitting through a mass of men.

[Vinyadan]

A couple of things.

A document by the Athenian National Museum says: "The size of the horses in these statues is particularly small, creating the impression that at the time, horses were small-bodied. In reality, however, their size most probably ranged between that of a small pony and a modern Arabic horse, though one cannot be certain." Since it's a recurring theme here and the evaluation comes from a reliable institution, here's a link: www.theacropolismuseum.gr/sites/default/files/ippeis_en.pdf

And a parallel between "now" and "then": we often talk about early modern armies discarding their stuff, because it was heavy to carry around, even though it could save their lives. Some time ago, I read that this is happening today with Western light infantry, that is carrying really heavy loads (the worst being around 65 kg), to the point that soldiers will start discarding gear. At the same time, this heavy infantryman has very good chances to survive a gun battle, compared to how it used to be during WW2. It's worth wondering if this gadget-laden, super-heavy soldier is an updated resurgence of heavy infantry, with light infantry being left for unprofessional forces like guerrillas and underfunded fighting units. The training had to change, and soldiers had to be taught how to handle heavy loads. Officers have more responsibility when it comes to equipment getting lost or discarded for the sake of movement. At the same time, injuries due to excessive loads are becoming increasingly common.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20131009.aspx
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/188986/British-soldiers-suffer-injuries-from-too-heavy-weights

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts.

[wolflance]

The whole raison d'etre of a bayonet to to give the soldier a pointy thing and still allow him to shoot the horse. Hard to do with a pike.

If all my men can shoot the horses, as opposed to 10-20% of my men, that greatly enhances the chance of your cavalry charge coming to nought. Probably just use the bayonets to finish off the lancers who are pinned under the dead mounts.

Napoleon had lancers. They didn't break a lot of squares. Nor did the armored Cuirassiers on big heavy horses.
Even Napoleonic lancers/uhlans were a far cry from medieval/renaissance knightly lance. The napoleonic lance is both lighter and shorter than the lance of previous centuries, is wielded close to the middle, and lancers sometimes thrust their lances instead of performing couched charge. Generally speaking this still bring the lancer dangerously close to the bayonet.

I agree with your raison d'etre argument though. Massed firepower was much more effective at stopping a cavalry charge cold before it even begin. As effective as "Ultraheavy (by Napoleonic standard)" knights at breaking infantry formation, they're expensive as hell, there's a high risk of being shot to pieces, and they couldn't out-attrition cheap unarmored infantry.

[Kiero]

Cheap infantry who could withstand attrition was essentially the French infantry model for the duration of the Napoleonic Wars.

France already had a large population to draw from, and the Revolutionary egalitarian notions that anyone could be a soldier combined with Napoleon's personal scorn for the status of infantry to powerful effect. Basic training for French infantry was rudimentary, they were expected to learn all the things they needed to on their first campaign. Those who showed particular talents either for light infantry work were drafted into the voltigeurs and tirailleurs; big, tough steady guys were made grenadiers. Veterans who survived a while were transferred into the Guard.

But all the status and investment was lavished on the artillery and cavalry.

[VoxRationis]

How easy is it for soldiers to fall back through friendly regular formations? I've heard of soldiers failing to move through each other, or overrunning their comrades, yet at the same time, the tercio formations with pikes at the center would seem to afford little protection to the gunners if it weren't possible for formations to move through each other.

[Mike_G]

How easy is it for soldiers to fall back through friendly regular formations? I've heard of soldiers failing to move through each other, or overrunning their comrades, yet at the same time, the tercio formations with pikes at the center would seem to afford little protection to the gunners if it weren't possible for formations to move through each other.

That all depends on formation, training and how often you drill.

So, either very easy, or "grab your ankles" time.

[PersonMan]

That all depends on formation, training and how often you drill.

So, either very easy, or "grab your ankles" time.

The type of movement would have an impact, too, right?

I imagine "gunners retreat into the pike square" is going to be a lot different from something like "the first three lines have turned around and are now trying to flee through the fourth line".

[Mike_G]

The type of movement would have an impact, too, right?

I imagine "gunners retreat into the pike square" is going to be a lot different from something like "the first three lines have turned around and are now trying to flee through the fourth line".

And the gunners falling back was expected and practiced. You can have a formation in more or less a checkerboard to leave room for friendly units to pass through, then have the ranks take one step forward or back to close up the ranks to meet an enemy in melee. If you drill, this can be done quickly.

This is the kind of thing that infantry drill was all about. All the co0mplicated marching and countermarching stuff you see marching bands and drill teams today that is mostly just for show came from the theory of need formations to change facing or open or close or extend or contract smoothly.

The secret is to drill it so much that you can do it on command under fire without thinking too hard.

[Mr Beer]

The secret is to drill it so much that you can do it on command under fire without thinking too hard.

This is the purpose of a lot of (effective) military training I imagine. I remember reading somewhere that recruits being trained think it's too extreme/hard/dangerous and then once they've been in combat they think the training should have been tougher.


http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=660

I love the expressions in this one, if this was a cartoon circa 20th century you would have little speech bubbles like this:

Horse: "Take that!"
Man: "OOF!"

[Vinyadan]

I love the expressions in this one, if this was a cartoon circa 20th century you would have little speech bubbles like this:

Horse: "Take that!"
Man: "OOF!"

It's because it's in the drollerie section of the illustration. The codex in question has three main illustration areas (http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/ms.bodl.264/44r.jpg): text decorations, within and surrounding the text, often with very realistic depictions of birdlife; small or full-page pictures (http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/ms.bodl.264/1r.jpg), presenting complex, massive scenery, often containing action, which I assume relate to the text; and the lower margin, which contains the drolleries, grotesque, funny, or entertaining, generally having nothing to do with the text. If you are curious, you can try googling "killer rabbits drollerie". The drolleries in this codex mainly represent realistic, depictions of everyday pastimes and work by normal people, war scenes (http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/ms.bodl.264/201r.jpg), a dismemberment (http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/ms.bodl.264/42v.jpg), and then baboons engaging in human activities (http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/ms.bodl.264/81r.jpg).

There was an active market of people who offered to paint drolleries on your books. We know that university students occasionally used their money this way, which their parents didn't like. This codex is really an outstanding work of art, probably produced by two or three different artists.

Anyway, I am increasingly convinced that the scene represented a show. Many of the pages nearby represent some kind of entertainment:
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/ms.bodl.264/71v.jpg
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/ms.bodl.264/78v.jpg
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/ms.bodl.264/76r.jpg
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/ms.bodl.264/73r.jpg There's a tamed monkey or little bear.


(Probable humour about blind people: http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/ms.bodl.264/74v.jpg )

[wolflance]

]baboons engaging in human activities (http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/ms.bodl.264/81r.jpg)
Wait, those are baboons? I thought they are...some sort of mythical wildmen, perhaps?

[Galloglaich]

All of the above. I think when they speak of an English style armour they mean the Grenwich made ones.

Greenwich (sp?) armours are a thing, though it only was founded in 1511. Yes Augsburg and Milan were the most famous centres but that doesn't preclude other places from making equally good or better armours. Augsburg and Milan made huge numbers though, to the best of quality the age would allow for (or the worst if that's how your fancy lay), which is why they are famous. Not because only they were capable of making the quality plates. Masters would be tempted away with lucrative contracts all the time am sure, which is how Henry 8 started his armoury.

I disagree - armor-making was a very sophisticated industry which also required a kind of eco-system of other ancillary industries, chief among them a large scale iron industry, which required many elements that England didn't have then.

England, or more specifically London did have some armorers in the 15th C, and I think York as well. I remember reading a list of craft guilds in London and they had a handful of armorers in 1425 - even two female ones. But they did not have a domestic armor production capacity anywhere near that of Augsburg or Milan. England may have been able to make mail and relatively simple plate armor pieces, say munitions grade, and of course they could have a few individual armorers of real skill who could make heat-treated steel artifacts - but those would be in almost every case either men brought over from South Germany or Italy, or men who had been trained by such.

In fact that is exactly what Greenwich was - it was an armor industry built around armorers imported mostly from Augsburg if I remember correctly. But as already noted, that was in the 16th Century when England had the money to pay for it. Greenwich stopped making tempered steel armor shortly after the last Augsburg armorer died in the 17th Century. The German armorers were unable to pass down their knowledge there effectively because England no longer still had the same kind of guild system.

In the early 15th Century English knights imported armor mostly from Milan and other Italian cities. The Italians made custom armor in a particular style which was somewhat unique to England (they did this for customers all over Europe and beyond). For early 15th Century something like this:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/45/e4/7d/45e47db5305b6e14588339efaacc97d1.jpg

Later in the 15th C. they shifted over to German armor exporters.

It was similar for France, though France stuck with Milan as a source for longer.

Augsburg and Milan weren't the only centers, there were several others in North Italy where they did make armor for export, notably Brescia but also Venice and to a lesser extent Florence, Lucca and Siena. And several others in Central Europe - Ulm and Landshut were fairly close to Augsburg, Cologne and Strasbourg on the Rhine had some capacity, Nuremberg was a major center. Bern made some of their own armor, as did Prague and Wroclaw, and Lubeck, Hamburg and Bremen further north. Even little Stockholm had a few armorers. I think there was some armor industry in Krakow and Gdansk as well, and the Teutonic Knights had armorers in Malbork and later in Konigsberg.

However all of those places imported a lot of armor from Augsburg and Milan too. Most of their best stuff would be from there.

The closest real armor making centers to England would be the larger towns in Flanders, like Bruges, Antwerp, Ypres, Tournai and Ghent all of which had legitimate armor makers guilds in the Late Medieval period.

For more on the armor including the individual families, this is a good synopsis:

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/make/hd_make.htm

G

[Galloglaich]

If I can figure out that you can create really good soldiers with some combination of a sense of community, warlike games, and frequent warfare, then why couldn't the Duke of Burgundy also figure out the secret? Why couldn't any of the military models copied directly from the swiss or even developed by swiss captains figure it out? I realize that an internet forum isn't really the best format for long-form essays or going into detail about every single factor at play however. So it probably is that I'm wrong and I'd have to do more reading myself until I've weeded out other possibilities or found enough interwoven elements working with and against each other that I don't understand exactly what happened anymore.

Well, it's one thing to identify something as what it is, it's quite another to accomplish it or manage it. I can look at a ballet dancer or a master violinist, and see what they are doing. But to do that myself, it takes more than a casual effort.

It's interesting that you brought up the Duke of Burgundy though, because for a few generations, they did accomplish this trick. They had the cities of Flanders and most of the time, Holland within their territory, and while their Valois cousins in France put the breaks on the towns, the Dukes of Burgundy gave them freer reign, even relied on them to help defeat the French. At the height of their power, and the Duke of Burgundy was in some ways the most powerful King in Europe during a large part of the Late Medieval era - they walked a very fine line between maintaining some semblance of control over their cities and getting tax revenue from them, while also allowing them to thrive.

It was not an easy tightrope to walk, and the Duke who was the best and most successful at it, thereby becoming the richest and most powerful prince in Europe (I would argue) in his day, was the very long reigning Philip the Good.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Philip_the_good.jpg

He was a very interesting guy. Among other things he had a sort of funhouse full of mechanical pranks, traps, miracles, and robots (automata) that he would entertain (and occasionally mortify) his guests with (http://www.medievalcodes.ca/2015/04/the-marvels-of-hesdin.html). He founded some of the most prestigious Chivalric orders in Europe, and was one of the greatest art patrons in a century full of them. He struggled, frequently, with his most powerful Free Cities for control, once being "detained" by Ghent for an extended period against his will, and on another occasion fighting a pitched battle with his men in the streets against the people of Bruges, from whence he escaped by the skin of his teeth (this during an incident when he had apparently tried to take over the city). But he bit his tongue, ground his teeth, and stopped short of the urge to destroy the cities when they defied him, as they routinely did.

Interestingly, the Dukes of Burgundy also managed to emulate English style longbow archery to some extent by cultivating it among their own yeomen peasants.

But you needed a pretty unusual Duke to manage that. Philip's son, Charles the Bold (also known as "Charles the Rash") was less moderate and less subtle than his father. Though a great war leader and personally, a formidable warrior, he had a very heavy hand. He mismanaged the revolt of Liege during his fathers reign, and his anger at the impertinence of commoners led him to commit many atrocities such as the massacre of nearly the entire population of that city in 1468, tying them together and throwing them into the river. They say the city burned for 7 weeks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_Li%C3%A8ge).

More problematic for him, he kept trying to be heavy handed with towns well beyond Flanders and going up the Rhine toward Switzerland. This put him at odds with a coalition of powerful Rhennish cities (notably Cologne and Strasbourg) with some Alsatian Counts, and eventually with the Swiss Confederation. And as you know, that cost him his life and ended the Valois dynasty of Burgundy. ultimately leading to the Spanish invasion (or 'inheritance') of the area which caused a regional decline.

As a prince, say a Duke or a King, you could have a Capital city which can produce impressive things, or you can have multiple Free Cities which can produce very impressive things. For a prince, a Free City is a conundrum - very difficult to control, so you only get limited use out of it, but it is a wellspring of wealth and technological and cultural genesis. The existence of the Free Cities undermines your authority, but their presence makes you richer, more sophisticated and more influential. Few princes had the skill of Philip the Good to walk that knife's edge, but there were some.

The cities themselves had a similar dilemma with Universities, incidentally. Once the university was in place, it had it's own law - the rectors were the magistrates for the students, who could come from anywhere and everywhere. The students caused controversies and the professors created huge scandals. Violence could break out and the ideas which came out of the scholarly collegia were often not to the liking of town authorities. But what would Bologna be without her University? What would Krakow? Or Prague? And yet some of the most difficult periods in those cities histories were directly caused by their Universities.

When princes tried to directly control, or create their own universities they often failed at this too. Many attempts were made. The Venetians were remarkably wise when they took over Padua - they appointed a podesta over the school but allowed it to follow it's own direction - the school motto was " Universa universis patavina libertas (Paduan Freedom is Universal for Everyone)".

There is a connection between freedom and innovation. Clearly, that is the correlation in the Renaissance and in the prior High Medieval flowerings of culture and technology. It basically all happened within the autonomous cities. And this included military innovation which was closely linked to art then in ways that it no longer is today.

One of the things I learned when I was doing a big research paper on Buenvenuto Cellini (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benvenuto_Cellini), was that when Italian cities of his day went to war, they summoned all the great artists in their territory and appointed them to work with their masons update the town fortifications. Artists were trained in geometry and math, and had the ability to think outside the box. This is how the Italians were able to adapt so quickly to things like cannons.

G

[Galloglaich]

But they did also try to break down the systems they could observe and copy them - that is what the Landsknechts and by extension, the Tercio's were. A copy of the Swiss system, (right down to certain elements of their autonomy, by the way). But at each level of emulation, the 'magic' faded a little. Like a tape recording (remember those? i guess I'm dating myself) that had been copied too many times.

I'm not saying the people in the 17th Century were stupid by any means, I would be a fool to do so. They lived in a different world and adapted to the rules of a different system. I don't think the people of the Ottoman Empire were stupid either - far from it. But they did not have the cultural flowering of the Renaissance, or the Greek Golden Age, because they lacked a certain complex mixture of social, cultural and political elements which made that possible.

Nor am I saying that the kind of city states or Free Cities that existed in Late Medieval Europe - or Ancient Greece- were the only way to accomplish this. The Arabs, Moors and Persians had a Golden Age of their own (or a series of smaller ones) in the 8th-13th Centuries, in cities like Cordoba, Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Rhages - culture flourished. They discovered the works of the Greeks and got their heads around it and went beyond it. It was precisely this work that the Europeans discovered which led to their Renaissance. And these cities were not autonomous in the same way as say, Augsburg or Venice was autonomous.

And of course, there is China.

So there is more than one way to make this happen -I only know about the European one in detail. I wish I knew more about the others! If I had another 15 years to spare I'd learn about India and China and Persia. But right now I'm still trying to figure out Italy and Bohemia and Flanders...

G

[Vinyadan]

Wait, those are baboons? I thought they are...some sort of mythical wildmen, perhaps?

It looks like two species of monkeys. I doubt that they are humans because of their butts. The brown ones have hard, small, bulbous buttocks, that are frequent in representations of monkeys. The black/dark grey ones have tails. Both kinds have hands instead of feet.

Other artists give monkeys some added features, like a pot belly. The prominent brow ridge here is only shown as a line above the eyes, and the snout is there on the second one from left, but not too evident. This makes them look more human than usual.

[VoxRationis]

What limitations have there classically been on the use of combined arms? I was discussing possible army compositions with one of my friends and suggested a tactical unit of 50 spearmen and 50 archers in one formation. My friend replied that it was implausible and pointed out that classical armies tended to have combined arms on the legion or army level instead. Is this true, and if so, why is this the case?

[Vinyadan]

It depends on what you mean by combined arms. In Greece, the most obvious limitation was the lack of a siege train for the armies, until larger political units, like the Macedon Kingdom, rose to prominence.

Legions had combined arms at a smaller level, like the carruballista, one per century.

Athens had 1000 horsemen and 200 archer horsemen. I don't know if the archers were deployed as a unit of their own or interspersed within the other cavalry battalions, but this is smaller than a legion.

Archery in Ancient Greece isn't exceptionally well studied (the Greeks themselves were in loves with the hoplites), but there is a doctoral thesis on it, and a few articles by the same author. (Archery in Archaic Greece - Todd Alexander Davis). In it, there is an example in which the Spartan archers really weren't combined with the hoplites, and were unavailable when needed, because their archer-only unit had been sent raiding.

At the battle of Aigition, 426, the Athenians had 30 ships and 300 marines, plus some allies, in unspecified numbers. They had archers. They also lost when the archers ran out of arrows and their troops couldn't pursue the enemy light infantry.

But a typical image of Greek archery in art is an archer kneeling behind a friendly hoplite, sniping from a distance at his enemy while the hoplite protects him. Whether it's just art or actual things that happened is another question.

[Kiero]

It depends on what you mean by combined arms. In Greece, the most obvious limitation was the lack of a siege train for the armies, until larger political units, like the Macedon Kingdom, rose to prominence.

Legions had combined arms at a smaller level, like the carruballista, one per century.

Athens had 1000 horsemen and 200 archer horsemen. I don't know if the archers were deployed as a unit of their own or interspersed within the other cavalry battalions, but this is smaller than a legion.

Archery in Ancient Greece isn't exceptionally well studied (the Greeks themselves were in loves with the hoplites), but there is a doctoral thesis on it, and a few articles by the same author. (Archery in Archaic Greece - Todd Alexander Davis). In it, there is an example in which the Spartan archers really weren't combined with the hoplites, and were unavailable when needed, because their archer-only unit had been sent raiding.

At the battle of Aigition, 426, the Athenians had 30 ships and 300 marines, plus some allies, in unspecified numbers. They had archers. They also lost when the archers ran out of arrows and their troops couldn't pursue the enemy light infantry.

But a typical image of Greek archery in art is an archer kneeling behind a friendly hoplite, sniping from a distance at his enemy while the hoplite protects him. Whether it's just art or actual things that happened is another question.

Agreed, in the case of Classical Greek antiquity, combined arms as we'd recognise it doesn't really appear until the rise of Makedonia. Before that the main event was the clash of hoplites, skirmishers and cavalry were an afterthought.

In the case of Athenian ships, archers were part of the standard marine complement. Each trireme was supposed to have a mixture of hoplites and archers (the latter were often Skythians or other steppe peoples), at Salamis it was recorded that the standard proportion was 14 hoplites and 4 archers. Furthermore, all the oarsmen could be turned into skirmishers for land-based actions, or particularly desperate boarding actions.

But western archery in general wasn't much to talk about when compared to eastern/steppe archers, who had vastly superior bows and much more practise. The only western archery tradition that was noted was that of the Cretans (who probably used Persian bows).

[Haighus]

How about slingers? Good slingers would be similar in role to archers in the ancient world?

[Galloglaich]

How about slingers? Good slingers would be similar in role to archers in the ancient world?

They did use slingers as well as dart or javelin throwers as light infantry / skirmishers to compliment the heavy infantry (hoplites) and the cavalry if they had any. The mix was often on the basis of where the troops came from. In antiquity slingers were often recruited from specific places, like Sardania or the Baeleric isles. Archers from Crete or Dalmatia. Peltasts from Thrace. Cavalry from Scythia or Macedon, or from the Celts, or from places like Numidia.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Agrianian3.jpg/220px-Agrianian3.jpg

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

Peltasts, armed with javelins or vaned darts (usually carrying 3 at a time) and a special type of light shield called a pelte or a peltarion, were particularly important to Greek armies. They seem to have played a decisive role in some battles.

Xenophons army from ~ 400 BC could be described as a 'combined arms' force with hoplites, peltasts, and cavalry.

Greek peltasts seem to have continued in use well into the Byzantine era as there are still references to them as late as the 12th Century. 14th Century Catalan Almogavars (ala Catalan Grand Company) also fought in a similar manner.

The Romans had a similar troop type called a Veles

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

Roman armies were also I would say, combined-arms forces. Though they were built largely around their heavy infantry, they also made good use of light infantry, archers, cavalry and torsion "artillery".

G

[Kiero]

How about slingers? Good slingers would be similar in role to archers in the ancient world?

Slingers with bullets (not merely stones) had a longer range than western self bows, and saw a lot more use in western armies than did archers. The Greek tradition of psiloi had three parts to it - javelineers, slingers and archers. Though all three weren't highly regarded for the most part. Oarsmen from the fleet often served as psiloi on land.

I've read that later Republican Roman legionaries often carried slings as well as everything else - after all it can serve as a pouch for a handful of bullets and thus doesn't add much to your load.

One thing to beware of with the term peltast is that it's used sloppily by the sources. Some use it to refer to skirmishers, others to a particular type of spearman using a smaller-than-aspis shield (possibly an innovation of Iphikrates), it's also used to refer to elite/assault infantry who form part of the Agema or royal guard.

[wolflance]

Slingers with bullets (not merely stones) had a longer range than western self bows, and saw a lot more use in western armies than did archers. The Greek tradition of psiloi had three parts to it - javelineers, slingers and archers. Though all three weren't highly regarded for the most part. Oarsmen from the fleet often served as psiloi on land.

I've read that later Republican Roman legionaries often carried slings as well as everything else - after all it can serve as a pouch for a handful of bullets and thus doesn't add much to your load.

One thing to beware of with the term peltast is that it's used sloppily by the sources. Some use it to refer to skirmishers, others to a particular type of spearman using a smaller-than-aspis shield (possibly an innovation of Iphikrates), it's also used to refer to elite/assault infantry who form part of the Agema or royal guard.
Speaking of slinger, was staff sling already in use during the antiquity?

[Kiero]

Speaking of slinger, was staff sling already in use during the antiquity?

The closest thing to a staff-sling in antiquity was the kestros (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kestros) - but I've not seen it appear much in artwork or the like. The earliest mention was quite late - 2nd century BC, during the rise of the Roman Republic to prominence.

[Jormengand]

Also, I'm writing a game, and need to make some essentially-arbitrary technology levels. I don't mind having large numbers of them, nor do I mind having them irregularly-spaced, but suggestions on where to put the breakpoints would be great.

So, further to this, I've come up with said essentially-arbitrary technology levels and written the following spiel about them:

TL 0 (c. Pre-3200 BCE): TL 0 represents pre-metallurgy technology; essentially, the stone age. The atlatl, a kind of spear launcher a little like a sling, and later the bow, though a very simple version of it, are kings of the battlefield. Most other technology is basic survival gear like tents and simple tools.

TL 1 (c. 3200-1200 BCE): The invention of bronze equipment and the creation of simple societies mark TL 1. It is roughly the bronze age. Simple swords are starting to be created, and chariots are one of the main war methods. Societies are starting to create partly-effective medical interventions.

TL 2 (c. 1200-500 BCE): Perhaps unsurprisingly, TL2 marks the iron age. Technology in other areas has moved on too, and societies are built around some of the new advances. In Japan, the Jōmon jidai, roughly meaning the age of pottery, ends around this tech level.

TL 3 (c 500 BCE – 500 CE): The gap between the iron age and the middle ages covers much of the age in history where Ancient Rome is prominent in the West, called Classical Antiquity, and mostly covers the Yayoi Jidai and Kofun Jidai in Japan. The use of steel weapons is becoming common in the West and improved metallurgy is also introduced in the East, but the period is often remembered for its infrastructure, some of which is still the foundation for modern infrastructure, in the West and for the artefacts found in Yayoi, Tokyo, in Japan.

TL 4 (c 500-1000 CE): The early middle ages, or dark ages, contain the rise of feudalism, and the rise of the kind of Viking whose archetype lives on in the modern perception. Europe and the middle east are occasionally involved in war, and the siege of Constantinople was one of the most famous instances of the use of Greek Fire The Asuka Jidai, Nara Jidai and Heian Jidai are the periods of Japanese history that take place here, and the Heian Jidai is the Jidai which gives rise to the military class of bushi or, as they are better known, samurai.

TL 5 (c 1000-1250 CE): The high middle ages are perhaps best known in British perception for the battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings, but perhaps more important was the rise of chivalry and the idea of the knights: the Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights were founded in this era. The invention of the blast furnace allows for the creation of better metal technology. In Japan, the samurai start to gain more influence, particularly at the beginning of the Kamakura Jidai which starts in this era – their famous weapon, the katana, is also invented (or at least properly characterised) in this era.

TL 6 (c 1250-1500 CE): The late middle ages are an era of much military development, and plate armour – often conflated as being an invention that spanned most of the mediæval era – is only actually invented late in this tech level, with the brigandine armour being invented earlier and used across the world. Knights reach their peak and decline in this era: plate armour is almost impenetrable, even to early gunpowder weapons, but later advances in gunpowder and even crossbows start to become serious threats to the supremacy of the knights, but even before them the longbow was dominant on battlefields, and not just in Europe – the daikyū is the Japanese take on the longbow, and samurai, unlike knights, have no compunctions about using ranged weapons.

Most importantly as far as Japan is concerned, the Sengoku Jidai – or “Warring states period” – is started off by the Ōnin War, a bloody conflict in which warlords try to stake their claim on the country, near the end of this period, while earlier on in this tech level, at the end of the Kamakura Jidai, the Mongol invasions rocked the ruling clan, the Hōjō, to the effect that Japan was flung into a civil war. For Japan, then, this is the period characterised by a great deal of warfare, much of it internal.

TL 7 (c 1500-1760): The early modern period begins around the fall of Constantinople, or a little later, and ends around the French Revolution; TL7 cuts this slightly to exclude the Industrial Revolution, one of the most important technological events in Europe (and even arguably in Asia, as the Japanese ended their Sakoku, or “Closed country”, an anti-trade policy, partly due to the Russian diplomat Yevfimy Putyatin's demonstration of a steam engine in Japan), from the events of the 260 years before it.

Gunpowder is in full force in this era; the musket makes its mark on history and the matchlock firing mechanism, while perhaps used by the Ottoman Janissaries decades before this era, was only made properly available in this technology level. Matchlock weapons were introduced to China and Japan by the Portuguese. Wheel-lock weapons were yet another development, at around 1500, but were promptly superseded by the snap-lock, snaphance and flintlock, the last of which made its mark in 1600 and kept on giving for over two centuries.

For close combat, the pike is one of the main weapons, and musket-users simulate pikes by attaching bayonets to the end of their firearms. Armour becomes a virtual nonentity for most, as the amount of armour required to stop a musket shot is enough to render the wearer essentially immobile (even modern armour that can stop them reliably is somewhat cumbersome).

TL 8 (c 1760-1860): The industrial revolution and the years immediately after mark the advent of a number of technologies, including the percussion lock, and the rifle, but also a huge number of non-military technologies, including iron, textiles, gas lights, and of course steam engines, but also advances in mining, infrastructure and even agriculture. The Napoleonic Wars saw the use of the first rifle – still a flintlock – and their new weapons gave the rifle regiments the upper hand over musketeers in terms of accuracy and range. Pump-action shotguns were also created in this period, and the mechanisms allowing for widespread use of revolvers are also invented late in this period, though they aren't common until right at the brink of TL 9. The Edo Jidai ends with the close of this period, and the Sakoku ends near the beginning of it, opening the Japanese up to new technologies.

TL 9 (c 1860-1914): The second industrial revolution opens up even more technologies in the West, further improving the production of iron and steel, and creating the first electrical technology. The motor car is invented around 1886, and the Model T becomes commonly available in 1908. As far as weapons are concerned, the Smith and Wesson Model 1 becomes the first revolver to use cartridges instead of percussion caps – ironically, while revolvers are often thought of as six-shot, the Model 1 holds seven shots. The Gatling gun, or perhaps the Maxim gun invented slightly later, is the first ever machine-gun, discounting the earlier organ guns.

In Japan, the samurai class goes down fighting at the battle of Tabaruzaka in 1877, when samurai armed with swords charge imperial state riflemen who outnumber them six times over and still inflict as many casualties as they take before finally retreating: they are chased all the way to Shiroyoma before the 500 remaining samurai again charge imperial troops, this time outnumbered by a factor of 60, and inflict around 30 casualties before the inevitable ensues.

TL 10 (c 1914-1918): The First World War sees a number of military techniques and technological advancements, such as the first tanks (discounting Jan Žižka's TL 6 precursors, which – while very effective – were little more than wagons with armour and cannons). Semi-automatic weapons, while invented near the end of TL 9, were refined to the point of actual military use near the end of the war. Military aviation actually started in 1911 in the Italio-Turkish War, but was most prominent during World War I.

TL 11 (c 1918-1957): The inter-war period and Second World War, as well as the escalation of the Cold War, brought further advances in technology. The atom and Penicillin were among the important discoveries of the time. Military inventions included light machine-guns which could be carried more easily than the ones used in World War I, and sub-machine-guns which were designed for mass-production. The war is ended partially due to the invention of the nuclear bomb, which is used for the first and the last time during the war.

TL 12 (c 1957-1989): The Space Age and the Digital Revolution happen at the same time as most of the Cold War: space exploration and the advent of the Internet begin in this area. As far as military technology is concerned, body armour is back in full force (not that it ever truly left) with kevlar vests being created. The start of the era roughly coincides with the rise of the assault rifle, though they existed during World War II

TL 13 (c 1989-2018): The world wide web allows people to communicate with friends – and enemies – from across the world. Technological development is rapid in multiple areas, and personal digital assistants – later smartphones – allow people to manage almost their entire lives with a single device if they so choose. Military technology also advances: though a lot of the personal weaponry remains similar or the same, others are new: electromagnetic weaponry was used to disrupt vehicles in the Iraq war, the Active Denial System is a microwave gun deployed in 2010, though it never saw combat use, and electro-laser weaponry is successfully tested in 2012. Wars are dominated by ordnance and in 2017, the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb is delivered. Body armour is improved greatly, to the point that its use becomes common among practically all armies once again.

TL 14 (2018-????): In 2018, the tabletop role-playing game Dishonour Before Death is released, making any technological advancement beyond that point speculative. The popularity of live-streaming increases the “Speed of outrage” as people react to global events as they happen. Medical technology advances to the point where bionics can reliably fix loss of senses and even limbs, and the development of powered armour which is actually combat-usable increases the strength of soldiers, although ironically usually only to the point where they can actually carry that much armour.

The assault rifle never really goes out of fashion, but for military use, DEW – directed energy weaponry – becomes more popular, as microwave guns can fry an enemy soldier at long distances without nearly as much noise as a gunshot, and plasma guns can have a solid go at taking out a tank. Portable laser weaponry is mostly usable only in space or at short ranges due to the fact that lasers disperse in air, and particularly in dust and smoke. The portable laser cutter brings a return to the use of short-ranged weapons in warfare, but it's far from the beam sword that people might wish to imagine it as. Still, it's an indispensable tool as well as a powerful weapon against almost anything.

In the year ????, the first kinetic bombardment marks the start of space-to-ground warfare, but conventional bombing and the invention of the rail gun make this impractical for a while.

TL 15 (????): If TL 14 was a sensible look into possible near-futures, TL 15 isn't. To attempt to predict anything beyond the near future is perhaps both foolish and entirely not the point. Still, there is some attempt at verisimilitude:

In close combat, the portable laser cutter is still the king of the battlefield and the simple knife the weapon of choice for most people who can't get their hands on one. Portable laser cutter duels are not, however, elaborate sword-fights: the main defence against one is either to dodge it, or perhaps use a mirror (which is inadvisable, as it only scatters the laser rather than reflecting its dangerous effects onto the wielder).

Laser weapons are cheap enough that they can be carried ubiquitously but are mainly used in airless environments. Microwave guns are more popular but it turns out that the best way to defeat an enemy is still by firing sharp pieces of metal at them and conventional firearms and explosives never really go out of fashion. The invention of the rail rifle allows infantry to take pieces out of buildings and vehicles with an easily-portable weapon, although the rifles themselves need repairing after a few shots.

Armour has the misfortune of only really protecting against one thing at a time: though putting a foil layer over conventional armour to try to deal with laser weaponry is possible, the reflective layer often breaks. Powered armour is more common but still too expensive to be standard-issue.

Walking vehicles are invented, but two-legged “mech” vehicles aren't common or particularly viable: most walking vehicles have a spider-like structure and can fall back on some kind of tracks if the legs are damaged.

Outside of military technology, the advancement of technology has been mostly in making things smaller, faster and easier. Some hard limits are reached: humanity essentially gave up on teleportation back in TL13 when it was realised that it probably broke several laws of physics, for example, and you can only make processors so small. Quantum computing and nuclear fusion are finally mastered, allowing for massive multiplication of computing power and energy production.

TL * (See text): TL * means the kind of technology which breaks one or more laws of physics. It exists outside even the speculative progress of technology and unchecked access to all TL * technology is inadvisable. Even if you have full access to all technology, the tech level is considered to be 15.

Partial Tech Levels (Optional Rule): If it bothers you to, say, see full plate used in 1250 because it was invented around 1400 (during the 1250-1500 tech level), the Arbiter can go through and manually forbid anything made after the date when the game is set. Similarly, if your game takes place in 1858, you might allow the TL 9 revolver which had been invented by 1858. Of course, the Arbiter can technically do whatever they like, but this bears mentioning in specific.

Items at Tech Levels: Each item has two characteristics to do with its tech level: the invention tech level and the obsolescence tech level. The invention tech level is relatively simple: the item either flat-out doesn't exist or is so rare that it isn't available at any tech level before the invention tech level. The obsolescence tech level does two things: one, it signifies that getting hold of the item in question may become a lot harder after the obsolescence tech level (for example, flintlock pistols aren't commonly made any more, so you can't usually pick one up at your local gun store even if you live in a country where local gun stores are a thing). Second, it means that the item stops getting cheaper (but doesn't get any more expensive) after that tech level. To be clear, the obsolescence tech level is the last tech level in which the item is not obsolete, that is, it is still in use (or at least, in production if not real use).

Tech Levels and Cost: In general, the advent of later technology makes it easier to produce items that were used in earlier technology levels. After the items are obsoleted, however, this is essentially balanced against the lack of people who actually make these items and learn the skills to do so. For every tech level after an item's invention, up to and including its obsolescence, the cost of the item is decreased by 5% of its original value. For example, an item introduced in TL 5 and obsolete in TL 8 is bought at a 5% discount in TL 6, 10% in TL 7, 15% in TL 8, and still 15% in TL 15.

I'm not really a historian or weapons specialist so I'm aware that some of this is probably inaccurate: could those more familiar with the topics have a quick read and check to see if I've said anything horribly inaccurate or misleading about history in TL 0-13, and about what is and isn't possible in TL 14-15? Also, as far as prices, how realistic or otherwise is the "Tech Levels and Cost" rule?

Many thanks in advance if anyone does help out. :smallsmile:

[spineyrequiem]

How would you go about fighting power-armoured troops with the ability to jump long distances? Assume the ability to jump about fifty feet every twenty seconds, and armour sufficient to bounce a few rife-caliber rounds, but not survive a full machine-gun burst. Assume a roughly modern tech level. Only things that are disallowed are aircraft, flamethrowers, chemical weapons and other things that inflict disfiguring injuries and non human-activated traps (so a guy with a clacker and a claymore is OK, a landmine is not). Also, if it matters, assume your troops are physically stronger than the power-armoured ones and can beat them one-on-one in close combat. Flashy and/or low-cost solutions are preferred, as the setting involves the whole thing being televised and budget is a factor.

[Knaight]

How would you go about fighting power-armoured troops with the ability to jump long distances? Assume the ability to jump about fifty feet every twenty seconds, and armour sufficient to bounce a few rife-caliber rounds, but not survive a full machine-gun burst. Assume a roughly modern tech level. Only things that are disallowed are aircraft, flamethrowers, chemical weapons and other things that inflict disfiguring injuries and non human-activated traps (so a guy with a clacker and a claymore is OK, a landmine is not). Also, if it matters, assume your troops are physically stronger than the power-armoured ones and can beat them one-on-one in close combat. Flashy and/or low-cost solutions are preferred, as the setting involves the whole thing being televised and budget is a factor.

Artillery. It's a bit of a one size fits all answer for a lot of things at or near the ground, and these troops fit that just fine, particularly with aircraft out of the picture.

[Gnoman]

How would you go about fighting power-armoured troops with the ability to jump long distances? Assume the ability to jump about fifty feet every twenty seconds, and armour sufficient to bounce a few rife-caliber rounds, but not survive a full machine-gun burst. Assume a roughly modern tech level. Only things that are disallowed are aircraft, flamethrowers, chemical weapons and other things that inflict disfiguring injuries and non human-activated traps (so a guy with a clacker and a claymore is OK, a landmine is not). Also, if it matters, assume your troops are physically stronger than the power-armoured ones and can beat them one-on-one in close combat. Flashy and/or low-cost solutions are preferred, as the setting involves the whole thing being televised and budget is a factor.

Anti-material rifles are probably a good bet in this sort of scenario, although they certainly aren't flashy. An armor-piercing .50BMG round will punch through any current-tech armor a human can wear. Given the scenario condition "assume your troops are physically stronger than the power-armoured ones", I have to assume either that the armor doesn't increase physical strength enough to close the gap, or that "your troops" are big and strong enough to scale up the rifle to an even nastier caliber. No matter how well they use terrrain, they'll be exposed to snap shots every time they jump, and such a rifle would have immense range.


Apart from that, rockets would be very effective and flashy, but would fall under your "no disfiguring injuries" ban.

[Vinyadan]

Yes, a manpad would be great. The alternative is medium machine guns. These use heavier rounds than assault rifles. Another one would be automatic rifles, that use similar ammo (7.62×51mm vs the lighter 5.56×45mm).

Steel wired nets like those for catching birds would work, too, if you can prepare the field. In general, if they can fly and you can't, there is no reason to make it easy or unobstructed.

[Gnoman]

spineyrequiem stated that the suits would stop "rifle-caliber" rounds, which I assumed meant full-rifle rounds of that sort. That is why I specified anti-material rifles (heavy machine gun rounds) as the logical counter. If "rifle-caliber" meant "assault rifle" instead, then medium machine guns and battle rifles would be quite effective.

[Galloglaich]

spineyrequiem stated that the suits would stop "rifle-caliber" rounds, which I assumed meant full-rifle rounds of that sort. That is why I specified anti-material rifles (heavy machine gun rounds) as the logical counter. If "rifle-caliber" meant "assault rifle" instead, then medium machine guns and battle rifles would be quite effective.

Drones with mines and RPG's, and with wires etc.

I think drones will be fighting each other that way soon.

G

[Carl]

How would you go about fighting power-armoured troops with the ability to jump long distances? Assume the ability to jump about fifty feet every twenty seconds, and armour sufficient to bounce a few rife-caliber rounds, but not survive a full machine-gun burst. Assume a roughly modern tech level. Only things that are disallowed are aircraft, flamethrowers, chemical weapons and other things that inflict disfiguring injuries and non human-activated traps (so a guy with a clacker and a claymore is OK, a landmine is not). Also, if it matters, assume your troops are physically stronger than the power-armoured ones and can beat them one-on-one in close combat. Flashy and/or low-cost solutions are preferred, as the setting involves the whole thing being televised and budget is a factor.

My first question is why the flight capable types are even using power armour. If the protection offered is so poor, (AFAIK modern ballistic vests will take upto 7.62 machine gun fire), and (probably), so much lighter than standard vests for a given coverage they could get a much greater flight endurance in exchange for dumping the completely redundant exoskeleton and the questionable extra coverage. Flight capabilities aside they're inferiour to your average armed street police. And that raises the question of why anyone would develop this.

Don't get me wrong, a short hop flight module paired with an external powered exoskeleton worn over standard modern battle dress makes perfect sense. It gives you a modular platform that you can reconfigure for different missions. Need the speed of a humvee with better vertical mobility. Clip on the flight pack. Need supplies for a long patrol or sustained firefight, put an oversized backpack full of supplies on. Need heavy firepower over a short duration. Let the exoskeleton take the weight of a bipod mounted heavy machine gun or grenade machine gun and ammo and he now has the firepower of a crew served weapon in a more mobile single man platform, meaning you can put several times as many into the field.

But giving up standard protection levels to get the mobility whilst simultaneously adding in the extra complexity and maintenance overhead of a powered exoskeleton under the armour is fairly questionable value.

That said you allready named the best answer for your assumption, a machine gun. Stronger opponents would make this easier as they could more easily cope with the weight of them and their ammo letting them carry more weapons or more ammo per unit. The advantage of the flight capability is generally going to be in the medium to long distance mobility it gives them. They'll use it to get into a better position before the fight actually starts, but somone flying through the air on a jump pack, unless they're much faster than your making it sound isn't going to be a hard target to hit, (it won't be trivial but it's not so hard you'd want to try and rely on it to avoid fire).

[Haighus]

Also, if you want to make machine guns flashy, stick a lot of tracer rounds in the ammo belts. That would also help them track moving targets.

[wolflance]

Drones with mines and RPG's, and with wires etc.

I think drones will be fighting each other that way soon.

G
Speaking of drone, Turkey's military kamikaze drone is recently set to mass production, apparently.

Drone might in fact become the future of warfare. It is cheap, precise, too small to be trackable with aa missile, hard to spot and shot down with aa machine gun, and in any case it is cheap enough that you won't care if one or two is shot down. Just saturate the entire area with hundreds of drones to overwhelm the enemy's defense.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Speaking of drone, Turkey's military kamikaze drone is recently set to mass production, apparently.

Drone might in fact become the future of warfare. It is cheap, precise, too small to be trackable with aa missile, hard to spot and shot down with aa machine gun, and in any case it is cheap enough that you won't care if one or two is shot down. Just saturate the entire area with hundreds of drones to overwhelm the enemy's defense.

Don't modern combat drones require a remote human pilot (at least for significant maneuvering)? That makes it harder to just swarm the enemy, it seems.

[Haighus]

Why are they too small to be trackable with an AA missile? Missiles can be tracked and destroyed at mach 5, and a drone is basically a slow-moving missile. The proximity fuses will need to be set to a much more sensitive mode, but then one missile could potentially knock out a lot of drones at once. Also, they could be very vulnerable to electronic counter-measures if they are too tiny- how do you emp-harden a complex piece of electronics strapped to a usefully-large lump of C4 if it is the size of a quadrocopter?

I think drones will be very important, but I don't think tiny drone swarms will be the main component of warfare for awhile, if ever.

[wolflance]

Why are they too small to be trackable with an AA missile? Missiles can be tracked and destroyed at mach 5, and a drone is basically a slow-moving missile. The proximity fuses will need to be set to a much more sensitive mode, but then one missile could potentially knock out a lot of drones at once. Also, they could be very vulnerable to electronic counter-measures if they are too tiny- how do you emp-harden a complex piece of electronics strapped to a usefully-large lump of C4 if it is the size of a quadrocopter?

I think drones will be very important, but I don't think tiny drone swarms will be the main component of warfare for awhile, if ever.
Drone has no firing signature. Thus spotting it being "fired" in the first place is much harder, and you will have no idea where is is launched from. It has no IR and nearly no radar signature too, is also mostly silent, can fly at varying height, and can navigate complex obstacles.

Plus most aa weapon systems aren't designed with handling hundreds of targets at once. You'd run out of ammunition before your opponent run out of drones.

So kamikaze drone is a bit like RPG - if RPG has a range of over ten miles and pinpoint percision, and can be launched in their hundreds (from a fleet of drone platform version of MLRS, for example)

Surely jamming is one countermeasure, but it's getting harder by the days.

And yes, drone swarm technology - where one operator can control hundreds if not thousands of coordinated, automated drones in a decentralized manner (which means the network won't be disrupted no matter how many drones in the swarm are knocked out or jammed), might be the next big thing coming too.

[Max_Killjoy]

On the other hand, a drone at short range can be shot down by a soldier with a shotgun and some skeet or fowl experience...

[Knaight]

On the other hand, a drone at short range can be shot down by a soldier with a shotgun and some skeet or fowl experience...

In the context of drones more like missiles than quadcopters they're going to be moving vastly faster than skeet or fowl.

[Max_Killjoy]

In the context of drones more like missiles than quadcopters they're going to be moving vastly faster than skeet or fowl.

Then they gain many of the vulnerabilities of missiles, and lose the tight maneuvering advantage of "copters".

Can't really have it both ways, like a quadcopter moving at mach 2.

[Carl]

Then they gain many of the vulnerabilities of missiles, and lose the tight maneuvering advantage of "copters".

Can't really have it both ways, like a quadcopter moving at mach 2.

I'd still say it's plausible to have somthing faster than a bird but slower than a missile thats still relatively light and low signature, at the same time it would be enormously vulnerable to any kind of rapid fire cannon with canister rounds, (Orlik have developed a few idea's along this line for their 35mm cannon for CIWS purposes allready), the hard part is determining the correct burst distance, but thats not intrinsically harder than automating the find the soldier part of the drones job.

At the same time cannon based guided rounds are making a resurgence and those allow for off bore firing solutions, (the biggest limit of a rapid fire dumb munition is going to be the weapon slewing rates), start combining the concepts and you can really start squeezing RoF out of your weapons systems. It's probably going to be a mutual annihilation scenario in cost terms and it's going to alter the shape of warfare as these defensive weapon equipped vehicles become prime targets and rapid resupply and reammunitioning of them becomes a key logistics need. But it probably won;t take the humble grunt out of the field.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'd still say it's plausible to have somthing faster than a bird but slower than a missile thats still relatively light and low signature, at the same time it would be enormously vulnerable to any kind of rapid fire cannon with canister rounds, (Orlik have developed a few idea's along this line for their 35mm cannon for CIWS purposes allready), the hard part is determining the correct burst distance, but thats not intrinsically harder than automating the find the soldier part of the drones job.

At the same time cannon based guided rounds are making a resurgence and those allow for off bore firing solutions, (the biggest limit of a rapid fire dumb munition is going to be the weapon slewing rates), start combining the concepts and you can really start squeezing RoF out of your weapons systems. It's probably going to be a mutual annihilation scenario in cost terms and it's going to alter the shape of warfare as these defensive weapon equipped vehicles become prime targets and rapid resupply and reammunitioning of them becomes a key logistics need. But it probably won;t take the humble grunt out of the field.

Long-endurance field-deployable laser systems are also in development for anti-missile use. They're going to be very useful against drones, I'd think.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One thing about disposable drone swarms is that it's really logistics (command and control, especially) heavy. Unless you have control of the electronic environment and can supply replacements, it's a one-shot weapon that's vulnerable to disruption. And the smaller they are the weaker their radios/AI must be (especially to conserve battery life/extend range). That really limits them to the high-tech, human-loss-averse sides of the conflict, as I see it.

[Martin Greywolf]

One thing about disposable drone swarms is that it's really logistics (command and control, especially) heavy.

Yeah, but so are human soldiers, and people tend to forget that. The logistics cost for a single, say, WW1 era soldier on the front lines is staggering - food, water, waste disposal, medical in case he gets injured, ammunition, comms (if you spread it out by meters of phone wire per soldier) and so on. Not to mention it takes a good 15 years at the least to make one! And people complain if you directly ramp up the production there.

The only reason we aren't using them yet is that they aren't that great - independent decision making is the most significant obstacle. Sure, you can have one drone per soldier, but then you aren't avoiding that many costs. If you can somehow get a swarm that can be directed at least semi-independently, drones start looking really good. Or bad. Depending on which side you're standing.

[Carl]

Long-endurance field-deployable laser systems are also in development for anti-missile use. They're going to be very useful against drones, I'd think.

Unless you've got a lot of power to work with lasers are pretty vulnerable to atmospheric conditions. Somewhere like Afghanistan, they'll do fine. Put them in western europe and the weather will have them inoperable most of the time.

Jamming comes down to the nature of the com gear. You can't jam every possible transmission frequency over a broad area indefinitely, it takes too much power and too many transmitters. But from some things that i think it was stormbringer siad, modern portable comms aren't particularly encrypted or frequency agile.

[Haighus]

You don't need to jam every frequency indefinitely though- if they are moving faster than a bird to avoid being shotgunned, then you only need to disable them long enough for them to crash.

[wolflance]

The only reason we aren't using them yet is that they aren't that great - independent decision making is the most significant obstacle. Sure, you can have one drone per soldier, but then you aren't avoiding that many costs. If you can somehow get a swarm that can be directed at least semi-independently, drones start looking really good. Or bad. Depending on which side you're standing.
Yeah, the US and China are researching into that. If it is a rotor type drone, a swarm of 500 drones is quite easily achievable. Fixed wing drone is harder, current record is about a hundred or so, I think.

Or you can have something like a mortar team I guess, have one soldier launch drone, kamikaze it to destroy something valuable on the enemy side, then have him launch another, etc.


You don't need to jam every frequency indefinitely though- if they are moving faster than a bird to avoid being shotgunned, then you only need to disable them long enough for them to crash.
Unlike guided munitions, drone stays airborne long enough that it may be possible to reestablish control to the jammed drone. Some drone may also be equipped with basic AI such as "if lost connection with the base, fly to somewhere to reconnect".

[Roxxy]

Do we have much information about what generally happened to US Military members who lied about their age to enlist while too young, especially during WW2, Korea, or Vietnam? My great grandfather lied about his age to join the Navy during WW2 and then stayed in after, and he did eventually get caught (not sure how), but by the time the Navy figured it out, the Korean War was on, he was in his twenties, and his ship was going over there. They let him stay in the Navy and stay assigned to his ship, and he left the Navy as a Chief Petty Officer during the 1960s. I'm not sure if he was punished in any way lying about his age, or how the US Military generally handled underage enlistment at the time if the person in question was 18 or older when caught and still in uniform. Does anyone else know? Like, I'm sure some 15 or 16 year olds must have joined the military early in the war and turned 18 by the time they got found out.

[Roxxy]

Is there a general consensus as to how much of a problem the lack of armor on the Zero fighters was? I know pilot training became a massive problem due to attrition and that the Zero became obsolete after the F6F and F4U were introduced en masse, but I'm more interested in the early war performance, like against P-40s or F4Fs.

[Mr Beer]

Do we have much information about what generally happened to US Military members who lied about their age to enlist while too young, especially during WW2, Korea, or Vietnam? My great grandfather lied about his age to join the Navy during WW2 and then stayed in after, and he did eventually get caught (not sure how), but by the time the Navy figured it out, the Korean War was on, he was in his twenties, and his ship was going over there. They let him stay in the Navy and stay assigned to his ship, and he left the Navy as a Chief Petty Officer during the 1960s. I'm not sure if he was punished in any way lying about his age, or how the US Military generally handled underage enlistment at the time if the person in question was 18 or older when caught and still in uniform. Does anyone else know? Like, I'm sure some 15 or 16 year olds must have joined the military early in the war and turned 18 by the time they got found out.

No direct knowledge but lying in order to be recruited to the US Military is a felony and I guess if you did it now, you'd get kicked out and be unable to re-apply.

If you were found out to have lied while a major war was underway, especially if you were around a front somewhere, my guess is nothing would happen to you if you were now an adult, until they could spare personnel.

16 year olds tend to wash out of military training a lot more than adults, so there's a good chance they wouldn't make it through basic anyway.

[Carl]

You don't need to jam every frequency indefinitely though- if they are moving faster than a bird to avoid being shotgunned, then you only need to disable them long enough for them to crash.

The thing is a practical mass deployable swarm drone requires that the drone is highly autonomous, it really need to be able to fly and navigate entirely without outside input, (the input only being used for giving "move to here" style instructions), and ideally identify targets on it's own, (requiring only release authorization from the command side at the most). It might still be valuable to have the drone transmit a lot of the sensor and decision loop data back to command so they can use it to refine the drone's decision making capabilities, but it;s not required for the system to function.

Further even in a situation where the drone does require a high degree of input back and forth you have to interrupt the control for an extended period of time. Against a receiver/transmitter combo thats highly frequency agile it's going to be virtually impossible to make it crash just by jamming whatever frequency it;s currently using as it can switch sio fast and thus produce enough delay before your system compensates and jumps frequencies that effective control can be maintained. Hence the need to jam all frequencies it can use adequate. And since you need an extended time period of jamming to create an unrecoverable crash that means sustained transmission capability on the full frequency range.

[Kiero]

Do we have much information about what generally happened to US Military members who lied about their age to enlist while too young, especially during WW2, Korea, or Vietnam? My great grandfather lied about his age to join the Navy during WW2 and then stayed in after, and he did eventually get caught (not sure how), but by the time the Navy figured it out, the Korean War was on, he was in his twenties, and his ship was going over there. They let him stay in the Navy and stay assigned to his ship, and he left the Navy as a Chief Petty Officer during the 1960s. I'm not sure if he was punished in any way lying about his age, or how the US Military generally handled underage enlistment at the time if the person in question was 18 or older when caught and still in uniform. Does anyone else know? Like, I'm sure some 15 or 16 year olds must have joined the military early in the war and turned 18 by the time they got found out.

My paternal grandfather lied about his age to join the Royal Marines when he was 15, and was evacuated at Dunkirk. He was kicked out when they returned home.

[Brother Oni]

It has no IR and nearly no radar signature too, is also mostly silent, can fly at varying height, and can navigate complex obstacles.

I'm not so sure on the low radar signature on drones. During Iraq and Afghanistan, CIWS were capable of detecting and intercepting mortar shells; I was reading an account from an operator where there's an initial burst from the weapon to intercept the shell, then a couple of seconds of the weapon going berserk as it detects and fires at any fragments large enough to still trigger the radar.

Man portable mortars officially range from 50-120mm calibre, but most top out at about 81mm. That's not very big for a drone which needs to have an offensive capability; for reference, the new Turkish suicide drones are 3.7kg for the fixed wing ALPAGU and 6.3kg for the rotating wing KARGU. I can't find an actual size for them, but this mockup indicates that even the ALPAGU is substantially bigger than a mortar shell and a little lighter than an 81mm mortar shell (4-5kg, depending on variant):

https://idsb.tmgrup.com.tr/2017/10/22/1508665261980.jpg

If mass drone swarms were to become more common on the battlefield, expect faster and better interdiction weapons - airbursting charges would be effective against swarms (doesn't take much to knock a drone out of the air) and using different detection methods (passive radar or lidar for example).
The LR-BSDS (https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/lr-bsds.htm) for example can detect synthetic aerosol clouds (eg biological or chemical attacks) at a distance of 30km. Admittedly, it does have a minimum resolution of 1nm, so a nanobot swarm could bypass it, but we're a little way off that at the moment. :smalltongue:

[Haighus]

Yeah, I think there is a bit of a hype about drones being able to do everything current weapons can with none of the downsides.

So far we've had fast enough to avoid soldiers shooting them down easily, but slow enough to be difficult to detect, and also to avoid the risk of crashing when disabled.

We also have drones that are very small to make them hard to detect, yet they are still large enough to have the computing power to steer themselves when disabled, carry a useful payload, and be shielded from electronic countermeasures and EMPs. In addition these things are going to have to be weather proof to quite an extent.

I just don't think tiny, fast, autonomous, shielded and weather resistant, and carrying a useful explosive payload is all compatible with each other under current tech, nor would it be for some time.

This isn't even considering the capabilities of the tech it is attacking. The main area where drones have been proposed as a cost-effective solution is in attacking ships in swarms. Brother Oni has talked about CIWS being able to attack that level of target already. Modern ship-borne AA radar systems, like on the Type 45 destroyers, are capable of tracking multiple tiny targets because they are being designed with stealth fighters in mind. The Type 45 is supposed to be able to independently track 2,000 tennis ball-sized objects, and with modern fleet integration, can command various fleet assets to attack these targets. No swarm of drones is sneaking up on a modern naval carrier group, or evading it's attacks. Ships can carry very large, powerful radar systems.

I think drones are more dangerous against land targets, but then they also have to have a much greater degree of autonomous movement to successfully navigate in a forest or an urban environment and attack troops and vehicles. They would still be vulnerable to ground-based AA systems, which can have powerful radars too, but I suspect they would be resistant to man-portable SAMs. So this leaves the dilemma of making the drones fly high, and be vulnerable to SAM installations, or make them fly low, and lose a lot of drones to collisions, and potentially force them to fly slow enough to be shotgunned down.

If they are too tiny, they won't even be able to damage an MBT, short of maybe knocking out the vision of the crew, and may struggle against other armoured vehicles if they are not using shaped charges.

I just don't see how they will negate other forms of warfare at this point. I more see them complementing existing strategies if anything.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I just don't see how they will negate other forms of warfare at this point. I more see them complementing existing strategies if anything.

And advanced drones like that (that can actually be effective against a 1st world military) will cost a bucket-load and a half. Expensive enough that only a 1st world military can reasonably provide enough to matter.

[Vinyadan]

The answer to "make drones useful vs ship" is "saturation strike". Put enough kamikaze drones incoming, against any target, and it will be overwhelmed. This, of course, is true of anything, and in no way restricted to drones: it works with missiles and artillery, and the problem was first observed for missiles, the question being: "what if a medium-to-large Chinese cargo ship is filled with nothing but fire-and-forget rocket-launchers". You have to destroy such a ship before it gets in range, because, otherwise, it will gravely hurt or destroy its target by overwhelming its defence though the sheer number of missiles fired. Which would be extremely nasty because of how cheap such a ship would be, compared to most US naval targets. And even such a ship can be turned into a drone, although this could arguably make it less deadly because of jamming.

In extremely important battles in the future, if drones will become a cheap alternative to fighter jets, in theory, a wing of drones could fire their missiles at enemy ships while getting near, and then, once out of ammo, crash together on the enemy deck, one after the other.

[PhoenixPhyre]

In extremely important battles in the future, if drones will become a cheap alternative to fighter jets, in theory, a wing of drones could fire their missiles at enemy ships while getting near, and then, once out of ammo, crash together on the enemy deck, one after the other.

The issue is that drones have lots of non-payload overhead that missiles don't. Batteries, processors, airframe, etc. They're not moving as fast as missiles, so the kinetic energy of the base thing is minimal. And they can't carry much ammo either. So you'd need a lot more than you would just with missiles.

[Galloglaich]

Is there a general consensus as to how much of a problem the lack of armor on the Zero fighters was? I know pilot training became a massive problem due to attrition and that the Zero became obsolete after the F6F and F4U were introduced en masse, but I'm more interested in the early war performance, like against P-40s or F4Fs.

The short answer is that initially, not so much of a problem, but after a while it did become one.

Every front line aircraft in WW2 had it's strengths and weaknesses. Carrier aircraft in particular tended to be a little weaker for combat than ground based aircraft, because they had to carry extra equipment (arrestor hooks, more navigation gear etc.), had to be strong enough to survive carrier landings without breaking up, but also small and light enough to fit on the (at that time, very small) carrier and manage to take off from it.

The A6M was almost certainly the world's best carrier fighter when it first appeared in 1941. It was an exception to the rule of carrier aircraft being slightly inferior- in fact it was actually better in most respects to almost all land based fighters in the world at that time. Climb, turn rate and general maneuverability, armament and range were all excellent. Speed was "good" - top speed at around 330 mph was less than that of some Allied fighters but good acceleration and streamlining meant it kept up a good combat speed. It also had excellent visibility which was critical for situational awareness.

Range was really the critical factor for carrier aircraft since being on a carrier meant they could frequently operate where the enemy was weak or had no air cover at all.

The other advantage that carrier planes had is that due to all the extra training required to take off and land from ships, the pilots had more training and tended to be better. This was doubly so for the Japanese who had trained some of their fighter pilots as long as 5 years, plus many of them had combat experience form Manchuria etc.

Japanese commanders leveraged this on the operational level by concentrating their carrier forces against relatively small and unprepared Allied air bases, so they were able to win local numerical superiority.

Japanese pilots also leveraged their aircraft's advantages in climb, turn rate and acceleration to dominante their opponents initially.

Opponents of the Zero
Their initial opponents were as follows:

F2A Buffalo
Curtiss CW 21
Hurricane Mk 1
P-39 Airacobra
F4F Wildcat
P-40B Tomahawk
P-40E Kittyhawk

Of these, the F2A and P-39 were never able to be fully worked out for operations in the Theater, and fought mostly when badly outnumbered. CW 21 was a point defense interceptor (which like the zero, had no armor or self-sealing tanks) and was always too outnumbered to really tell if it had any merit. It did get a few victories. Hurricanes seemed to be fairly useless against Zeroes.

only the F4F and the P-40 seemed to have any value against the Zero. F4F first drew blood (but I think against A5M "Claude") at Guam, and then Coral Sea and Midway. Like the IJN pilots, the US Marine and Navy pilots were pretty well trained and had also developed specific tactics for fighting the Zero pretty early on.

P-40 pilots weren't as well trained - some of the Australians only had a few hours on the type before entering combat, but managed to cause casualties anyway when they were able to get in the air (most P-40's in Hawaii and the Philippines were caught on the ground). They mostly got slaughtered at Hawaii, Philippines and Java, mainly due to being badly outnumbered and poor training, but a couple of guys shot down several planes during Pearl Harbor and the Australians had success with them starting at Milne Bay and the defense of Darwin. The main advantage the P-40 had against the zero, aside from armor, was being able to dive to disengage from combat that wasn't going well. The P-40, like the Wildcat, was also very maneuverable, not as much as the Zero at low speed, but it could out roll and turn it at high speed.

(More famously the AVG and later USAAF groups did well against Japanese fighters in Burma / China but these were not zero's, rather the similar Ki-43)

Guns vs. planes
Armor was almost unheard of on planes in 1939, but was nearly universal by 1941. The guns on a zero, two 20mm especially, could tear apart an enemy fighter with a concentrated burst no matter how much armor they had, so the armor had limited value. But that 'glancing blow' protection (how I hate to use that particular cliche term but it does fit here) was important. In a typical engagement, you might get 4 or 5 attempts to shoot down an enemy aircraft. If you shoot, you might get a partial hit, or a 'pretty good hit', or a 'devastating hit'. In the latter case, the plane is doing down regardless. But armor and self sealing tanks can save the plane in the first two cases, sometimes it can still make it back to base, or even continue the fight and win.

https://www.worldwarphotos.info/wp-content/gallery/usa/aircrafts/p-40-warhawk/79Th_Fighter_Group_Based_At_Capodichino_Italy_pilo t_Examines_his_Damaged_P-40.jpg

However, it could save you from being hit by a few rounds. Check out this P-40 pilot from North Africa examining the results of and Me 109 that hit his plane with multiple 20mm cannon shells. In this image, the 20mm shell hit right behind the cockpit armor, which definitely saved the pilots life. There is a video somewhere in which you can see him walking around the whole plane which was hit 4 or 5 times. He pulled the plug from one of the shells out of the wing and later wore it around his neck.

The Australian ace Clive Caldwell once survived being attacked by three Bf 109's in his P-40, shooting down one of them and damaging the others, and made it back to base with over 100 bullet holes in his aircraft.

But against a zero, with the heavy .50 cal guns of the American planes, just a few rounds like that could set the fuel tank on fire, kill the pilot or disable the engine. It was harder to hit because it was so nimble and climbed like a bird, but if it did get hit it was 'game over' most of the time. They did incidentally put armor and self sealing tanks on later model Zeros, I think by late 1942, but by then too much damage had been done.

The TL : DR is that in combat, the Zero's maneuverability and general performance, as well as it's phenomenal range which allowed it to concentrate force in the early weeks of the war, compensated sufficiently for it's weaknesses - it was basically evenly matched with the F4F and P-40. However when the war shifted into more of an attrition mode for example in the Solomons and North Australia, the IJN took too many losses.

Later when faster planes like the P-38, Hellcat, and Corsair got into the Theater, the A6M was subject to hit and run attacks which put it at a disadvantage, but it could still get kills.

The biggest problem was more Strategic - the lack of armor and self-sealing tanks, combined with an inadequate system for rescuing downed pilots, meant that against roughly evenly matched opponents like the Wildcat, the IJN suffered badly from attrition. Lets say for every 5 Japanese planes badly shot up, they lost 4 pilots either killed or PoW; whereas for every 5 Wildcats or P-40's lost, the Allies only lost 2 KiA or PoW, and were able to rescue the other 3 pilots. In fact quite often even after being defeated the P-40's in particular would limp back to base shot up and manage at least a belly landing.

This meant that under combat 'friction' as Clausewitz called it, over a fairly short time - mostly in 1942- the Japanese lost too many pilots to be sustainable. This was further exacerbated by an overly long Japanese training cycle. US and Australian pilots would be sent back to the home country to train new guys after they had fought for about a year, and allied training systems got better and better as the war went on. Japanese training, though excellent particularly for the Navy, took way too long and by 1943 they had to almost scrap it and push barely trained pilots into war, a mirror image of the Allied situation two years earlier.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Kawasaki_Ki-61-14.jpg

The vulnerability of the A6M would not have mattered so much, incidentally, if the Japanese Army had been able to field more robust fighters a little earlier on, like the Ki-61 Tony, an excellent design but hampered, like all later war Japanese designs, with maintenance problems. Same with the Ki-84, Ki-44 and J2M and so on. The twin engined Kawasaki Ki-45 was basically a failure, proving highly vulnerable to P-40's in Southeast Asia. The main and most successful Japanese Army fighter was the Ki-43 but it, like the Zero, lacked armor or self -sealing tanks until around the end of 1942, and they lost too many pilots.

The Navy, in other words, and their Zero fighter, should not have had to do the 'slog it out' sustained air battles of the Solomons or Australia, but they were forced to do so because the Japanese Army didn't have enough good fighters and their main planes (Ki-43) were also suffering from attrition for the same reasons as the Zero.

If you look at other carrier fighters around the world, like the Gladiator and the Fulmar of the FAA, or even the Seafire, they do not compare to the A6M. The F4F was slightly inferior, the F6F was slightly better, but victories by F6F pilots were more due to collapsing Japanese pilot training system and numbers than superiority of the type. The F4U was decisively better but it wasn't flying from Carriers until late 1943 IIRC.

G

[Max_Killjoy]

Another thing that changed, from what I've read. When Allied pilots refused to get into turning fights with the Zero, and instead restrained themselves to hit-and-run attacks, preserving energy during the attack and then getting away to make another pass when they the advantage, it nullified many of the Zero's advantages. (IIRC a tactic first developed by the AVG for use against the IJA's fighters before official American involvement.)

[Galloglaich]

Another thing that changed, from what I've read. When Allied pilots refused to get into turning fights with the Zero, and instead restrained themselves to hit-and-run attacks, preserving energy during the attack and then getting away to make another pass when they the advantage, it nullified many of the Zero's advantages. (IIRC a tactic first developed by the AVG for use against the IJA's fighters before official American involvement.)

Yes, that is true to an extent, but it tends to get oversimplified / exaggerated to the point of cliche. The F4F's did have to get into turning fights, usually, they used special group tactics, i.e. Thach Weave etc., but in practice, they did do some dogfighting - they just avoided extended low-speed turning fights and would try to dive away when things got dangerous (as they could quite quickly).

The P-40 had a performance ceiling of about ~16,000 feet, so they didn't often have the luxury of diving down onto A6M fighters. In practice, they tried to keep their speed up and avoid low-speed turning fights, but they did actually turn with the A6M. The A6M was very nimble at low speed but it had stiff controls at higher speeds. The key to fighting them was to keep the speed up, and then (again), dive away if things got bad which the P-40 could really do well (with a dive speed of ~550 mph or even more).

This is a quote from Robert DeHaven, a 14 Kill fighter ace in the Pacific who flew P-40's and P-38's

""If you flew wisely, the P-40 was a very capable aircraft. It could outturn a P-38, a fact that some pilots didn't realize when they made the transition between the two aircraft. The real problem with it was lack of range. As we pushed the Japanese back, P-40 pilots were slowly left out of the war. So when I moved to P-38s, an excellent aircraft, I did not [believe] that the P-40 was an inferior fighter, but because I knew the P-38 would allow us to reach the enemy. I was a fighter pilot and that was what I was supposed to do."

"You could fight a Jap on even terms, but you had to make him fight your way. He could outturn you at slow speed. You could outturn him at high speed. When you got into a turning fight with him, you dropped your nose down so you kept your airspeed up, you could outturn him. At low speed he could outroll you because of those big ailerons ... on the Zero. If your speed was up over 275, you could outroll a Zero. His big ailerons didn't have the strength to make high speed rolls... You could push things, too. Because ... if you decided to go home, you could go home. He couldn't because you could outrun him. ... That left you in control of the fight."

How the fights went depended on the bombers - during level bombing raids by twin-engined bombers the fighting might take place at 18-22 thousand feet. In tactical bombing (such as Dive or Torpedo bombers in Naval action or close air support / or dive bombing airfield attacks such as at Guadalcanal or Milne Bay, the fighting altitude would be lower, sometimes very low.

Overall, pilots who survived did their best to understand the performance envelopes of their own plane and of those they were likely to face. Against Zero's it was a good idea to keep the speed as high as possible and stick with wingmen to avoid getting jumped.


The allies also had more and better radio's and were able to coordinate better as a result in at least some air battles. Some Japanese fighters only had radio receivers, and some (especially some of the Army planes) had a radio that barely worked or no radio at all, this gave the Allied pilots a significant advantage in group tactics - i.e. if you were being chased you could ask for help, if you spotted the enemy you could notify your comrades and tell them how many and at what altitude (as opposed to just waggling your wings) etc.

G

[Knaight]

It's also worth noting that some of the early planes that went up against the Zero were downright terrible, partially because Allied strategists were assuming that Japan wouldn't be able to make a good plane, and thus the terrible ones would work. The Buffalo in particular stands out there - that plane was garbage, being both sluggish and not particularly maneuverable, with a whole host of minor flaws on top of that.

[Galloglaich]

It's also worth noting that some of the early planes that went up against the Zero were downright terrible, partially because Allied strategists were assuming that Japan wouldn't be able to make a good plane, and thus the terrible ones would work. The Buffalo in particular stands out there - that plane was garbage, being both sluggish and not particularly maneuverable, with a whole host of minor flaws on top of that.

True and yet the Finn's loved it and did extremely well with it.

Kind of like the P-39 - the Americans could do very little with it, there was only 1 P-39 Ace in the USAAF in the whole war. Same for the other allied countries that used it.

But the Russians loved it and did bang-up with it. Their #2 ace flew it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pokryshkin) - the #2 Allied fighter ace of the war. It's still a bit of a mystery.

But the long and short of it seems to boil down to the fact that different aircraft were better suited for certain Theaters than others, and spending time familiarization with a new aircraft (which the Russians did with the P-39), particularly a foreign made one, and training your pilots on the type -as well as stripping away a little extra weight- can pay large dividends.

It's clear though that few of the Allied aircraft on hand could handle the A6M. The Spit V didn't do very well either.

G

[Carl]

@Brother_Oni: The problem with the mortar example is a mortar us a solid hunk of metal. These drones are going to be mostly composites and plastics. That means on a size for size basis the radar signature will be a fraction the size of a mortar shell. And thats assuming no stealth features are built in. Those cost but costs are coming down all the time and a soldier isn't cheap to train, you need a drone thats cheap compared to the lifetime cost of a soldier. That doesn't mean it would be technically impossible to pick them up, but especially at low altitude over land you start to run into problems with false positives if you set the sensitivity too high.

@Haighus: We've been building autopilots with that level of navigation features for decades, meaning the computational needs are quite low. he real hard part is providing the semi-autonomous targeting, not in terms of processing power but in terms of programming. Your effectively being required to build a full expert system to do that, and thats a programming technique thats still only really in the toddler stage. We've done it and they work but getting it down pat isn't easy yet. Everything other than that relies on tried and tested technologies we've been using for decades allready.

I mean as a practical matter you could probably build a proof of concept using entirely off the shelf parts. RC plane, Smartphone, block of C4, Detonator. The only custom bits would likely be the gimbal for the phone and the interface between the phone and the plane systems, (plus software). Fro a material cost PoV your paying less than a thousand dollars and the plane is likely overpriced, (RC planes are a bit of a specialist hobby so the usual mass production factors apply, somewhat defrayed by the need to upgrade the construction for more stealthy features), and the phone has a lot of unneeded expensive features and programs, (but somewhat defrayed by the ened to put in better comms gear and the advanced software). I wouldn't be surprised to find you could produce a viable drone assuming you don't suffer software cost spirals, (the riskiest bit), for less than 2k dollars at mass production scales.

Based on this random link (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/397258/Army_Training_Costs_Per_Recruit.pdf) produced by google the cost of training a soldier is around 40k US dollars at current exchange rates and the same search turned up a claim of 17.5k dollars for the equipment. That's a lot of drones for each infantryman.

[Max_Killjoy]

@Brother_Oni: The problem with the mortar example is a mortar us a solid hunk of metal. These drones are going to be mostly composites and plastics. That means on a size for size basis the radar signature will be a fraction the size of a mortar shell.


Radar cross-section is about a lot more than material composition.

Drones tend to have a lot of surface area and bits sticking out, and rotors are very hard to "stealth up".

[Carl]

Radar cross-section is about a lot more than material composition.

Drones tend to have a lot of surface area and bits sticking out, and rotors are very hard to "stealth up".

Yes but many materials like most plastics and composites are virtually see through to radar, they don't reflect much energy back, metal is exceedingly good at reflecting energy back. Your right that it's not all about construction material, but the materials makes an enormous difference and make any comparison between the two relatively irrelevant. Rotors are hard t stealth because they often have to be metal because of the performance requirements, keep it modest and you don't need metal rotors, which again significantly eases the problems.

[Knaight]

Radar cross-section is about a lot more than material composition.

It's mostly size and shape, where the right shapes can make things seem orders of magnitude smaller than they actually are (hence the angles seen on stealth aircraft, and the general lack of gentle curves on said aircraft, along with the general lack of certain much worse angles).

[Brother Oni]

@Brother_Oni: The problem with the mortar example is a mortar us a solid hunk of metal. These drones are going to be mostly composites and plastics. That means on a size for size basis the radar signature will be a fraction the size of a mortar shell. And thats assuming no stealth features are built in. Those cost but costs are coming down all the time and a soldier isn't cheap to train, you need a drone thats cheap compared to the lifetime cost of a soldier. That doesn't mean it would be technically impossible to pick them up, but especially at low altitude over land you start to run into problems with false positives if you set the sensitivity too high.

How big do you think fragments of a mortar shell are after it's been intercepted by a CIWS burst?

How much of a lidar trace does a drone have compared to an aerosolised spray of liquid?

I'm not saying there's current off the shelf technologies that work perfectly, but I am of the opinion its just a matter of adjusting the sensitivity appropriately and if a few birds or clouds get picked up as hostiles, there's still the human operator to confirm the order to fire. Alternately, set up a big no fly zone around the site to be protected; anything that gets close is doubled checked by an operator and anything that breaches the zone is an automatic shoot on sight.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes but many materials like most plastics and composites are virtually see through to radar, they don't reflect much energy back, metal is exceedingly good at reflecting energy back. Your right that it's not all about construction material, but the materials makes an enormous difference and make any comparison between the two relatively irrelevant. Rotors are hard t stealth because they often have to be metal because of the performance requirements, keep it modest and you don't need metal rotors, which again significantly eases the problems.

Shape can exacerbate radar reflectivity, which is part of the problem with rotors regardless of the material they're made of.

Motion is also an issue -- radar returns from rotors have a very distinctive pulsing pattern that makes them stand out more than gross reflectivity would suggest.

[Carl]

How big do you think fragments of a mortar shell are after it's been intercepted by a CIWS burst?

How much of a lidar trace does a drone have compared to an aerosolised spray of liquid?

I'm not saying there's current off the shelf technologies that work perfectly, but I am of the opinion its just a matter of adjusting the sensitivity appropriately and if a few birds or clouds get picked up as hostiles, there's still the human operator to confirm the order to fire. Alternately, set up a big no fly zone around the site to be protected; anything that gets close is doubled checked by an operator and anything that breaches the zone is an automatic shoot on sight.

Depends how the shell was destroyed. If it was using APFSDS (i'm not sure what they load into the 20mm CIWS these days, some systems use APFSDS soem use normal cannon shells some use programmable canister rounds), it probably tore it apart without detonating the explosives, so a moderate number of medium sized pieces. If it was explosives it probably blew out part of the shell venting the force of the likely sympathetically detonated filler mostly out that way produce several large pieces. Unless you get a perfect nose to nose intercept your very unlikely to cause it to fragment the way it would upon hitting somthing on its own, so large fragments are entirely possibble. Bear in mind even vs sea skimming missiles it uses a 100-200 round burst but only achieves a small handful of hits. it fires that many rounds because thanks to shell drift from the aim point due to inherent inaccuracy it takes that many rounds to put enough in the right piece of sky to hit the target to achieve a kill. Most of the rounds fired miss their target. Given a mortar shell is vastly smaller i'd be surprised if more than one or two rounds hit the mortar bomb before it broke up.

The problem with upping the sensitivity isn't that you might lock onto the odd false target. It's that almost any moving object could become a potential target. Artillery shell lands and throws dirt and rocks in the air? You could get it firing on some of that. You open up on a flight of drones and scare the birds on the ground into flight, you just added several dozen new targets. Hell given how low drones would fly you could have issues with overshoots throwing up stuff into the air that the system then locks onto or swaying tree branches in strong winds. Te problem with high sensitivity isn't odd false targets, it's that you can turn almost anything that moves above the ground surface into a potential false target. if you can;t eliminate them sufficiently then the system becomes unusable.

Worse even if you can get false ratio low enough, every false target engaged is one less real target you can engage, and when the drone swarms are coming-in in massive numbers you need every intercept you can get out of the system. Bear in mind the Phalanx system only has enough ammunition for a half a dozen intercepts before it needs reloading, and assuming the barrel life is similar to it;s airborne variant it will only last 50-100 intercepts before it requires the entire set of barrels changing.You can certainly seriously improve on this, But it's key to keep the wastage down or it's going to overstress your logistics.


Shape can exacerbate radar reflectivity, which is part of the problem with rotors regardless of the material they're made of.

Motion is also an issue -- radar returns from rotors have a very distinctive pulsing pattern that makes them stand out more than gross reflectivity would suggest.

Don't misunderstand me, i'm not saying shape is irrelevant. What i'm saying is both play important roles and having an advantage in one seriously helps you with the other because the two affect each other strongly.

[Brother Oni]

Depends how the shell was destroyed.

In the specific case I was mentioned (mortar defence over a land base), they used a mix of HEI and tracer, with pre-programmed destruct so you don't leave live shells all over the area. Mortar shells also travel a lot slower than a sea skimming missile so would likely be easier to hit, but I can't find an interception rate for the weapon (probably for OPSEC reasons).


Worse even if you can get false ratio low enough, every false target engaged is one less real target you can engage, and when the drone swarms are coming-in in massive numbers you need every intercept you can get out of the system. Bear in mind the Phalanx system only has enough ammunition for a half a dozen intercepts before it needs reloading, and assuming the barrel life is similar to it;s airborne variant it will only last 50-100 intercepts before it requires the entire set of barrels changing.You can certainly seriously improve on this, But it's key to keep the wastage down or it's going to overstress your logistics.

You're not comparing like with like here - you're using future drone tech vs current interception capabilities. Ideally you should be comparing current drone tech (MQ-9 predators, the Turkish drones mentioned earlier, the Russian UAVs used in the Ukraine) with the CIWS and other interdiction systems, or theoretical interdiction systems with theoretical drone swarms, otherwise we end up in this situation here where we end up arguing in circles.

It's like comparing a WW2 era KV1 tank versus WW1 era 7.7 cm FK 16 AT gun, where one is the result of tried and tested technology shoe-horned into facing a new threat, while the other was the the cutting edge of technology after 20 years of development and out-performed everything when it was first deployed.

There's issues on both sides of the equation (effectiveness of drones vs effectiveness of interdiction systems), but given that the of future drones on the battlefield is a developing and unknown area, we don't know what the capabilities will be. We do have hard data on the effectiveness of interception systems though, so that is the bar that drone performance has to meet, else they'll be relegated to recon/target acquisition and we'd just use faster and sneakier missiles instead.

[Carl]

In the specific case I was mentioned (mortar defence over a land base), they used a mix of HEI and tracer, with pre-programmed destruct so you don't leave live shells all over the area. Mortar shells also travel a lot slower than a sea skimming missile so would likely be easier to hit, but I can't find an interception rate for the weapon (probably for OPSEC reasons).



You're not comparing like with like here - you're using future drone tech vs current interception capabilities. Ideally you should be comparing current drone tech (MQ-9 predators, the Turkish drones mentioned earlier, the Russian UAVs used in the Ukraine) with the CIWS and other interdiction systems, or theoretical interdiction systems with theoretical drone swarms, otherwise we end up in this situation here where we end up arguing in circles.

It's like comparing a WW2 era KV1 tank versus WW1 era 7.7 cm FK 16 AT gun, where one is the result of tried and tested technology shoe-horned into facing a new threat, while the other is the result of over 20 years of development in a new field.

There's issues on both sides of the equation (effectiveness of drones vs effectiveness of interdiction systems), but given that the of future drones on the battlefield is a developing and unknown area, we don't know what the capabilities will be. We do have hard data on the effectiveness of interception systems though, so that is the bar that drone performance has to meet, else they'll be relegated to recon/target acquisition and we'd just use faster and sneakier missiles instead.

1. Your misunderstanding the problem. Let me use a different CIWS as an example because we have a bit more info on that, (or at least i was able dig up a couple of key pieces of info on it). the GOALKEEPER system. I'm taking the accuracy from the A-10 mounting, but the A-10 is probably less prone to vibration than the CIWS mount as the mass of the system is mounted to is a key factor here.

It's accuracy works out at 80% of rounds landing within a circle of a diameter 1/100th the firing rnage. In it's CIWS configuration vs a mach 2 missile it fires approximately 100 rounds starting at 1500m and finishing at 300m. Using the P270, (the hypothetical target in this scenario), as a basis we can determine what percentage of the round fired that will strike a missile at any given rnage. Let's use the shortest range for maximising hit rate. At 300m the weapon has a spread of 3m diameter for 80% of it's rounds. Or 1.5m radius. That equates to the rounds being spread over an area of 7.068m^2. The missile has a diameter of 0.8m, or radius of 0.4m for a frontal area of 0.5026m^2. You can probably all but run the math on that yourself. Roughly 1 in 14 of the rounds that land inside the 80% area will hit, or roughly one in 17.5 of those fired. If you average the dispersion area over the entire engagement envelope you get an average of approximately 1 in 227 rounds. Thats obviously false and there's several reasons for that. The most important one, (and the only one i';m going to cover), being that the dispersion of rounds within the inaccuracy diameter will tend to be biased towards the center.

The point is however they don't miss the missle with most of their shots because of anything the missile is doing, it's a fundamental physical limitation of the weapon itself.

2 A). Your misunderstanding somthing key if you think i'm describing highly futuristic drones here. That was my point on the whole "we can build a proof of concept out of majority off the shelf parts". There are only two bits of stuff involved that we've never done before. The first is providing adequate capable comms gear in such a small form. And the second is the target recognition software. The first is really a matter of miniaturisation limits. The second is the only real difficulty. And if the turkish drone cna do what is being claimed up thread then clearly it allready has been solved in some fashion. Expanding on that with better detection resistance is again an engineering challenge we've allready solved on larger scales.

2 B). I totally acknowledged the possibilities earlier of more advanced interception systems and even described the broad outlines of one that would have significantly better barrely life and ammo economy earlier. I also acknowledged that IMO it's not going to replace the humble grunt. It's just going to change the operating requirements for the humble grunt, which in of itself would be a very useful strategic and/or tactical capability. The point i;m making is that defending against them isn't going to be trivial in terms of challenge and is going to have consequences far beyond whatever effect they have on the humble grunt.

[Max_Killjoy]

You're disregarding proximity fuses?

[Carl]

Where did i do that? And what point is that supposed to be relevant to exactly?

[Brother Oni]

Where did i do that? And what point is that supposed to be relevant to exactly?

Point 1, where you discuss the probability of directly intercepting a missile by striking its frontal area of 0.5026m2. I believe you've assumed the GOALKEEPER system is using APDS in CIWS configuration, which is why it has to strike the missile directly. A proximity fuze would vastly increase the effective radius of an intercepting shell to disrupt a missile.

Since a drone will not be travelling at mach 2 any time soon, I'm wondering if that 80% interception rate would go up, both through a slower rate of fire (the system can afford to take longer to calculate a more accurate firing solution) and a bigger effective radius via proximity fuzes and HE shells.

Given that the vast majority of militaries are deploying more and more drones, it's highly likely that they'll become more and more sophisticated.
Whether that will expand in a more offensive capacity or whether they'll be more for recon (apparently the not-Russians were using drones as spotters for artillery during the Ukraine conflict, something which a number of Western militaries were watching in great detail) will probably depend on how the interdiction systems develop in response to any potential drone threat - while I agree with you that this is likely to be non-trivial, I'm of the opinion that there's still a lot of hype over-exaggerating their capabilities, at least in their current form.

The technology isn't the only issue, there's also the political and legal limitations: I've heard of developments into small automated UGV drones to scout out buildings or terrain and it won't be hard to add a proximity charge to it (or just duct tape a hand grenade to a drone like the not-Russians did). Depending on how sophisticated its target acquisition system was, it could potentially fall foul of the CCCW (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Certain_Conventional_Weapons) or got added to it in a later amendment.

[Vinyadan]

In the end, it will probably come to throwing a nuke in the sky and hope it gets the drone formation... Option B is creating some sort of vacuum bomb to screw rotor-based drones by creating a km long airless sphere (or corridor) and make them fall by depriving them of lift.

[wolflance]

Where did i do that? And what point is that supposed to be relevant to exactly?
At this point I am starting to lose touch on where the issue lies.

Even the fastest of missiles can be intercepted/shot down in one way or another, but that doesn't make them any less effective or dangerous.

So likewise I don't see the CIWS (or other AA systems) affecting the effectiveness of drones in any way. Drone being THE cheap, precise, small, and unpredictable weapon, surely there are more targets you can strike than your enemy can reasonably defend with CIWS. Basically anything short of a MBT can be killed with a smallish drone operable by a single person. That's some serious firepower being held inside a long range, precise and cheap package there.

[Max_Killjoy]

At this point I am starting to lose touch on where the issue lies.

Even the fastest of missiles can be intercepted/shot down in one way or another, but that doesn't make them any less effective or dangerous.

So likewise I don't see the CIWS (or other AA systems) affecting the effectiveness of drones in any way. Drone being THE cheap, precise, small, and unpredictable weapon, surely there are more targets you can strike than your enemy can reasonably defend with CIWS.

The cheaper and smaller the drone, the less actually capable it is, and the more vulnerable it is to small arms fire, local point defense, etc.

Reading these discussions (and not just here), it's like there's this thought that drones will go Mach 2+, be maneuverable enough to enter buildings, have good enough sensors that nothing can hide from them, have secure enough communications that they can't be hacked or jammed, have advanced AI so they can act independently, be small enough to be hard targets for defensive fire, be invisible to radar and lidar and imaging IR, carry enough warhead to do meaningful damage... and be cheap enough for half the world's militaries to field millions of them each.

And at the same time, any comparison is made to present-day or even decades-old defensive systems, as if the magical advancements that will allow 1-pound invisible brilliant drones carrying 25-pound warheads wouldn't be used on the defensive systems as well.

Hell, if drones are going to be so awesome, then the most advanced militaries will just field defensive drone swarms to counter them.

[Vinyadan]

Some years ago, the Deutsche Bahn found out that having a small army of surveillance drones in the sheds would have costed them less than making up for the damage caused by vandals and spraypainters to trains. So defensive uses of drones look like a really cheap alternative.

About using drones vs drones, that would likely end up with dedicated drone classes, like interceptors. Not that it would be too strange: just compare the Global Hawk with the Predator with the Scan Eagle. But the main reason for developing such a class of drones would probably be low costs, enabling your enemy to strike at you with more than you can handle without using drone technology yourself. The question is whether drones really would be the cheapest alternative, when it comes to interception.

As for whether or not they will be good and made in the millions, I think that nothing is impossible, but there need be such a demand. And there's also the fact that prices for military-grade long-range weapons are very high, and cheap gets relative. I mean, cheap is a combination of absolute cost + GDP of the maker/buyer + value of items destroyed or captured or denied to the enemy via the product + GDP of the enemy + human costs that have been avoided + collateral costs/gains (like fighting a shorter war, that should be a net gain).

So I can see millions of recon drones, but I can't see millions of air force drones. I could see a multi-role infiltrator drone for each squad, though. That whole "enter building, scan around, fly a bit high, defend yourself" part would be nice. And some things, that now soldiers have to carry themselves, could be put on the drone. Like radio jammers to be safe from IEDs, or medi kits.

[wolflance]

The cheaper and smaller the drone, the less actually capable it is, and the more vulnerable it is to small arms fire, local point defense, etc.

Reading these discussions (and not just here), it's like there's this thought that drones will go Mach 2+, be maneuverable enough to enter buildings, have good enough sensors that nothing can hide from them, have secure enough communications that they can't be hacked or jammed, have advanced AI so they can act independently, be small enough to be hard targets for defensive fire, be invisible to radar and lidar and imaging IR, carry enough warhead to do meaningful damage... and be cheap enough for half the world's militaries to field millions of them each.

And at the same time, any comparison is made to present-day or even decades-old defensive systems, as if the magical advancements that will allow 1-pound invisible brilliant drones carrying 25-pound warheads wouldn't be used on the defensive systems as well.

Hell, if drones are going to be so awesome, then the most advanced militaries will just field defensive drone swarms to counter them.
While that is certainly true (smaller drones are less sophisticated, and carry less boom), the same can be said for AA defense. Man-operated AA weapon will have a hard time responding to smallish drones in a timely manner, while something relying on radar/other detectors will be too bulky to be deployed everywhere, and are themselves vulnerable to things like anti-radiation drone or missile.

A mach 2+ weapon will probably be classified as a missile, or at least a missile-drone hybrid, instead of a "pure" drone. Modern drones can achieve nearly everything you described, or will achieve them in the very near future, but cannot pack everything into the same drone. In any case, a drone agile enough to sneak into building does not need to carry tank-killing firepower, since tank can't fit into the building anyway. A carrier-killing drone carrying 1000-pound warhead though, will be hardened against jamming and detection, but doesn't require the agility of its smaller counterpart.


as if the magical advancements that will allow 1-pound invisible brilliant drones carrying 25-pound warheads wouldn't be used on the defensive systems as well.
It's not that these advancements can't be used by other defensive systems. Things like detection/jamming or stealth/anti-jamming are very universal in their military application. However drone is so far the best platform to integrate and utilize these new technologies together, in a never-tried-before way. A cruise missile will have zero need for drone swarming technology, or drone-level AI, since they don't loiter for long enough to make those things useful.

Also, you can't expect to arm your humvees with tomahawk missile to strike at targets 500km away, but with drone, now you can. Previously, you can't expect to use a tomahawk missile to kill an enemy APC from long range (overkill and waste of money). With drone, now you can! The relative cheapness of drone has more implication than simply swarming and overwhelming your target. It also allows you to throw what amount to launch anywhere, "budget tomahawks" at targets previously deemed "not valuable/important enough" to warrant an actual tomahawk strike. And these less valuable targets tend not to have sophisticated AA systems guarding them.




Most smallish kamikaze drones have fuel that last for about half an hour to several hours (depending on its size and purpose), so I don't see defensive, anti-drone drone being a very viable strategy (since to be defensive you need to make the drone stays airborne longer), but I am holding my breath.

[Mr Beer]

Anti-drone guns might use lighter calibre rounds or even some form of shot since presumably you don't need nearly the same KE to kill a drone as you would a missile. So maybe specialised defences can make up for the numbers problems by simply putting a lot more lead in the air.

It's going to be horrible for the poor bastards on the ground who get swarmed by suicide drones carrying explosives. Imagine seeing hundreds of these things swooping down on your squad and knowing you can't possibly shoot them down before they get you all.

[Galloglaich]

About using drones vs drones, that would likely end up with dedicated drone classes, like interceptors. Not that it would be too strange: just compare the Global Hawk with the Predator with the Scan Eagle. But the main reason for developing such a class of drones would probably be low costs, enabling your enemy to strike at you with more than you can handle without using drone technology yourself. The question is whether drones really would be the cheapest alternative, when it comes to interception.

This.

I think we are going to see such development rapidly in the next few years. I believe we are in a stage with drones right now analagous to airplanes in the early years of WW 1. Mostly used for surveillance, just experimenting with causing harm to ground targets (ok a little more than experimenting, but not really militarily decisive yet). I do agree the next phase is going to be drone vs. drone interceptors, both on the ground and in the air.

And the incredible state of large scale RC civilian aircraft right now (some reaching speeds of 400 mph for example and easily big enough to carry say, a light machine gun) suggests we will soon see some impressive drone interceptors, bombers, escorts and so on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hNRB_B1fAA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-4LD2i4oDg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD2TYt2b_FE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtRqiAtOO3E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRpd12J-nOg

Check out this one with the cockpit view

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHsK1HFAhow

There is also already pretty advanced software capable of controlling these things in combat, at least on the 'tactical' level (i.e., how to attack and shoot at enemy aircraft) i.e the AI in the more sophisticated flight Sim software.

Would it be hard to modify one of those RC planes to shoot down drones lke the type the Taliban and ISIS were using to successfully surveil their enemies troops to coordinate VBIED attacks and even drop hand grenades into the hatches of armored vehicles.... no it would not. If I was in the military today in some kind of advisory position where people would listen to me I would be encouraging the development of things like these RC jets and in combination with AI software from games like IL2 (which already gives me a hard time)

Haven't convinced you? How about an RC plane shooting another one with airsoft

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

G

[Galloglaich]

RC WW2 fighters staging mock dogfights with onboard cameras. Put a .22 caliber rifle in one of these with 50 or 60 rounds in it and I bet you could disable a typical drone very easily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO7-EScqb3o

[Galloglaich]

RC WW2 fighters staging mock dogfights with onboard cameras. Put a .22 caliber rifle in one of these with 50 or 60 rounds in it and I bet you could disable a typical drone very easily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO7-EScqb3o

Now think of one of those large RC aircraft dropping a swarm of these guys, with each of these having about an ounce of plastic explosive or maybe a single .22 short bullet in it.

[Carl]

Point 1, where you discuss the probability of directly intercepting a missile by striking its frontal area of 0.5026m2. I believe you've assumed the GOALKEEPER system is using APDS in CIWS configuration, which is why it has to strike the missile directly. A proximity fuze would vastly increase the effective radius of an intercepting shell to disrupt a missile.

Since a drone will not be travelling at mach 2 any time soon, I'm wondering if that 80% interception rate would go up, both through a slower rate of fire (the system can afford to take longer to calculate a more accurate firing solution) and a bigger effective radius via proximity fuzes and HE shells.

Given that the vast majority of militaries are deploying more and more drones, it's highly likely that they'll become more and more sophisticated.
Whether that will expand in a more offensive capacity or whether they'll be more for recon (apparently the not-Russians were using drones as spotters for artillery during the Ukraine conflict, something which a number of Western militaries were watching in great detail) will probably depend on how the interdiction systems develop in response to any potential drone threat - while I agree with you that this is likely to be non-trivial, I'm of the opinion that there's still a lot of hype over-exaggerating their capabilities, at least in their current form.

The technology isn't the only issue, there's also the political and legal limitations: I've heard of developments into small automated UGV drones to scout out buildings or terrain and it won't be hard to add a proximity charge to it (or just duct tape a hand grenade to a drone like the not-Russians did). Depending on how sophisticated its target acquisition system was, it could potentially fall foul of the CCCW (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Certain_Conventional_Weapons) or got added to it in a later amendment.

The problem with using proximity fused HE rounds is that the actual burst radius is very small and the damage potential of individual fragments is very low. In fact the 35mm oerlikon system i have repeatedly referenced does exactly this vis it's programmable canister rounds. Based on the information available every single round can be expected to score some hits. But because the hits are so much less destructive it still takes a great many rounds fired to get a kill.

Now you may point out, (rightly), that a drone is a lot more fragile. And this is where i come back to the smaller target problem. To ensure that you don't have entire patterns missing the drone completely because of separation between fragments your going to have to narrow the pattern which is almost certain to produce a fair number of clean misses. All of which means it's still going to take a fair few rounds. It might well take lss than the missile. But it';s not going to be tiny ethier.

I'll get back to where i'm going with this after i address Max_Killjoy's post.


The cheaper and smaller the drone, the less actually capable it is, and the more vulnerable it is to small arms fire, local point defense, etc.

Reading these discussions (and not just here), it's like there's this thought that drones will go Mach 2+, be maneuverable enough to enter buildings, have good enough sensors that nothing can hide from them, have secure enough communications that they can't be hacked or jammed, have advanced AI so they can act independently, be small enough to be hard targets for defensive fire, be invisible to radar and lidar and imaging IR, carry enough warhead to do meaningful damage... and be cheap enough for half the world's militaries to field millions of them each.

And at the same time, any comparison is made to present-day or even decades-old defensive systems, as if the magical advancements that will allow 1-pound invisible brilliant drones carrying 25-pound warheads wouldn't be used on the defensive systems as well.

Hell, if drones are going to be so awesome, then the most advanced militaries will just field defensive drone swarms to counter them.

At no point have i been talking about such drones. As i've gone to pains to point out 90% of what would be needed can be done using technology that we've demonstrated the ability to do for decades. The comms gear and the targeting expert system are the only real hurdles. I can't speak authoritatively on the comms gear, but i'd be surprised given ever increasing miniaturization capabilities if it's actually impossible to do. The expert system however is somthing various work has been done on for a long time and they have started in simpler forms to be used. Developing the necessary software wouldn't be trivial, (and this combined with the mostly specialized uses is why so few exist outside of a lab), but it's not beyond our means, it's simply difficult. In fact technically Microsoft's Contra system for Win 10 could be considered a tech demonstrator of the kind of software involved, she works with speech rather than drone sensor data and her accurrency rate is nowhere near high enough for real world weapons control uses, but she's a good demonstrator of the basic capability, (pattern recognising decision system), required and as a civil product deployed on a mass scale produced as a non-primary system feature she's not remotely the state of the art, (advanced yes, the limit of what we can do, no).

The part your sort of missing here, (and Brother_Oni as well), is it doesn't need to be an all singing all dancing super advanced drone to be a threat vs even relatively advanced interceptor technology.

Lets say we've got a 35mm interceptor system with a range of 2km, an average shots required to kill of 30 with a RoF sufficient to put that out in a 1 second burst. s a drone with a flight speed roughly twice that of a bird, (say 60kph), that means assuming a high capacity machine feed and properly cooled barrel one such system could stop 120 drones between them entering engagement range and them reaching detonation point. Thats assuming of course your infantry are nicely clustered uop around the interceptor rather than it firing over their heads from a standoff.

Except these drones are cheap enough to deploy several to a man. That means your going to need a couple of hundred intercepts worth of capability per infantry company. And concentration of force combined with the attacker having the initiative means your certainly going to want more than that. And carrying 3600 rounds of 35mm ammo, 1 or more cannons, and the necessary generating capacity to feed the mechanized ammo feed system. Thats probably bigger than a bradley hull, (or similar), and your going to need logistics stuff to carry ammunition to them and crew to man them and logistics for them and keeping all of this with your infantry is going to restrict when where and how you can use them on both a strategic and tactical level.

At that point it doesn't matter if the drones never get a kill. They've forced you to expend resources whilst restricting your options, (and creating a dangerous wea link to target in your defences), sufficiently that the effects of the threat in being alone are sufficient to make the drones worth it.

The idea of defensive drones isn't a bad one either, but the same features that will make them tricky to engage with CIWS are going to make getting significant advanced warning hard. That's either going to require that you have more drones, (so you can be strong enough everywhere the enemy could show up), or faster drones, (so you can react fast enough). Both have potential cost efficiency issue,s but yes it'd still expect drones of some description to form at least one part of the defence strategy which may well lead to a drone war. Where that will end i have no idea.


Anti-drone guns might use lighter calibre rounds or even some form of shot since presumably you don't need nearly the same KE to kill a drone as you would a missile. So maybe specialised defences can make up for the numbers problems by simply putting a lot more lead in the air.

It's going to be horrible for the poor bastards on the ground who get swarmed by suicide drones carrying explosives. Imagine seeing hundreds of these things swooping down on your squad and knowing you can't possibly shoot them down before they get you all.

The danger is you risk each round being less efficient which requires more rounds and more weapon systems which creates inefficiencies which make it all fall apart. That said like all tech it's going to take time to proliferate and a lot of the early threat to major militaries outside of a superpower war will be smaller scale than the true "full scale" threat which will likely lead to a lot of makeshift modifications of existing systems to produce systems adequate to deal with a low intensity drone threat before we start seeing dedicated systems. Though doubtless a few of those will show up too.

[Brother Oni]

The problem with using proximity fused HE rounds is that the actual burst radius is very small and the damage potential of individual fragments is very low. In fact the 35mm oerlikon system i have repeatedly referenced does exactly this vis it's programmable canister rounds. Based on the information available every single round can be expected to score some hits. But because the hits are so much less destructive it still takes a great many rounds fired to get a kill.

Now you may point out, (rightly), that a drone is a lot more fragile. And this is where i come back to the smaller target problem. To ensure that you don't have entire patterns missing the drone completely because of separation between fragments your going to have to narrow the pattern which is almost certain to produce a fair number of clean misses. All of which means it's still going to take a fair few rounds. It might well take lss than the missile. But it';s not going to be tiny ethier.


You can't have it both ways in a single drone. It can't simultaneously have a lower radar trace due to use of lightweight composites and plastics AND have the same level of durability against current munitions designed to destroy a much tougher and harder to hit missile. Given the fragility, you also don't need as much damage to disable the drone - damaging one of its wings will make it less likely to hit a target, whereas a missile will simply plough on through due to sheer inertia.

You're also assuming that the system will use the same firing solution intended to hit a mach 2 missile on a 60kmph target. Since you can narrow the target pattern, you're far more likely to hit thus can afford to space the shots out more (comparatively speaking) for greater accuracy and precision. A missile travelling at mach 2 will clear 2km in ~4.9 seconds, while a 60kmph target would take 2 minutes.


Lets say we've got a 35mm interceptor system with a range of 2km, an average shots required to kill of 30 with a RoF sufficient to put that out in a 1 second burst. s a drone with a flight speed roughly twice that of a bird, (say 60kph), that means assuming a high capacity machine feed and properly cooled barrel one such system could stop 120 drones between them entering engagement range and them reaching detonation point. Thats assuming of course your infantry are nicely clustered uop around the interceptor rather than it firing over their heads from a standoff.

You're assuming it takes 30 rounds to hit such a slow moving target - as mentioned a 60kmph would take 2 minutes to reach the target, when the incoming rounds take ~1.7 seconds (based on the 1175m/s speed of a 35mm Oerlikon GDF HEI shell). A more efficient firing solution would increase the engagement endurance of an interception.

There are reports of drones, all of which with a higher cruise speed than 60kmph, getting shot down by militants and insurgents equipped with small arms and MK1 eyeballs, so a state of the art interception system fielded by a First World military would find it significantly easier.


Except these drones are cheap enough to deploy several to a man.

If you're taking logistics into account for the intercept system, you also need to take it into account for the drones. Say 3 drones apiece and 3.7kg per drone, that's over 11kg extra weight per man (not including the launching system) on top of their regular gear.

Given that a difference of only 13.2lbs (6kg) has a significant effect on a soldier's performance (and the weight estimates in this assessment (https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/call/call_01-15_ch11.htm) are low compared to the infantryman loads in Iraq and Afghanistan), I'm not seeing that many drones deployed per man.

I think you're also missing a major point that these interdiction systems are currently deployed to protect static high value targets like bases or other assets like ships. They're not going to be carted round with infantry companies, so the average grunt on patrol will have to suffer the risk of getting drone swarmed.

As Galloglaich said, I think we're still in the very early stages of drone technology and while the potential is still there, the current countermeasures aren't going to be standing still in their development either.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Another problem with drones is that payloads don't scale linearly. Throwing more lighter munitions at something runs into problems pretty fast, especially if the target is hardened at all.

Even a lightweight machine gun weighs as much or more than the drones you're talking about with even a small amount of ammo. And that's at 5.56mm, which (with the heavier cartridge than the standard 22LR) is about the minimum to hurt an infantry man in proper armor. A standard 22 (which is light enough and low recoil enough to handle on a drone that size) doesn't have the penetrating power necessary. And neither of these can even really scratch an APC.

Explosives become markedly less efficient when you scale them down to levels you can fit in a small drone. Especially because you're paying the overhead weight cost of the casing and fusing for a bunch more munitions (instead of having a bigger one). Since you don't have the speed necessary for a tank-type round, you're pretty stuck.

[wolflance]

Explosives become markedly less efficient when you scale them down to levels you can fit in a small drone. Especially because you're paying the overhead weight cost of the casing and fusing for a bunch more munitions (instead of having a bigger one). Since you don't have the speed necessary for a tank-type round, you're pretty stuck.
On the other hand, a drone is a top-attack weapon, so it can target the most vulnerable part of an armored vehicle, for example.

That being said, currently no small (as in launched by an infantry) drone is capable of threaten a MBT yet. Anything that's not a MBT can be taken out though.

[PhoenixPhyre]

On the other hand, a drone is a top-attack weapon, so it can target the most vulnerable part of an armored vehicle, for example.

That being said, currently no small (as in launched by an infantry) drone is capable of threaten a MBT yet. Anything that's not a MBT can be taken out though.

For man-portable drones I'm seeing things with total payloads measured in single-digit kilograms at best. That's not much. The only exceptions are artillery-launched and non-recoverable (called loitering munitions) that basically are missiles. And all of them are super fragile.

Do you have other information?

[Galloglaich]

For man-portable drones I'm seeing things with total payloads measured in single-digit kilograms at best. That's not much. The only exceptions are artillery-launched and non-recoverable (called loitering munitions) that basically are missiles. And all of them are super fragile.

Do you have other information?

Contrasted with the disadvantage of small payload etc., is the advantage of small size and being hard to see.

ISIS has already used commercially available drones to destroy ammunition depots in Syria and also to destroy & damage armored vehicles by dropping munitions into the open hatch.

They are using 'bomblets' which are basically fin-stabilized grenades. here is one being dropped in a munitions depot in Syria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz2jrmnm7ds

There have also been several mysterious and spectacular explosions in Ukraine which have been attributed (behind the scenes) to Russian or pro-Russian separatist forces.

Here is a drone dropping a bomblet on an M1A2 tank and I would say quite clearly injuring a crewmember

https://youtu.be/Po8bfnvbRyA

I have also seen a video of a Hummer being blown up this way (bomblet went into the hatch)

G

[Galloglaich]

If you're taking logistics into account for the intercept system, you also need to take it into account for the drones. Say 3 drones apiece and 3.7kg per drone, that's over 11kg extra weight per man (not including the launching system) on top of their regular gear.

.

Have you seen this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndFKUKHfuM0

another thing about flying drones, they can be deployed by aircraft.

Also see the video of the 4" P-51 drone I posted upthread

G

[Carl]

You can't have it both ways in a single drone. It can't simultaneously have a lower radar trace due to use of lightweight composites and plastics AND have the same level of durability against current munitions designed to destroy a much tougher and harder to hit missile. Given the fragility, you also don't need as much damage to disable the drone - damaging one of its wings will make it less likely to hit a target, whereas a missile will simply plough on through due to sheer inertia.

You're also assuming that the system will use the same firing solution intended to hit a mach 2 missile on a 60kmph target. Since you can narrow the target pattern, you're far more likely to hit thus can afford to space the shots out more (comparatively speaking) for greater accuracy and precision. A missile travelling at mach 2 will clear 2km in ~4.9 seconds, while a 60kmph target would take 2 minutes.



You're assuming it takes 30 rounds to hit such a slow moving target - as mentioned a 60kmph would take 2 minutes to reach the target, when the incoming rounds take ~1.7 seconds (based on the 1175m/s speed of a 35mm Oerlikon GDF HEI shell). A more efficient firing solution would increase the engagement endurance of an interception.

There are reports of drones, all of which with a higher cruise speed than 60kmph, getting shot down by militants and insurgents equipped with small arms and MK1 eyeballs, so a state of the art interception system fielded by a First World military would find it significantly easier.



If you're taking logistics into account for the intercept system, you also need to take it into account for the drones. Say 3 drones apiece and 3.7kg per drone, that's over 11kg extra weight per man (not including the launching system) on top of their regular gear.

Given that a difference of only 13.2lbs (6kg) has a significant effect on a soldier's performance (and the weight estimates in this assessment (https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/call/call_01-15_ch11.htm) are low compared to the infantryman loads in Iraq and Afghanistan), I'm not seeing that many drones deployed per man.

I think you're also missing a major point that these interdiction systems are currently deployed to protect static high value targets like bases or other assets like ships. They're not going to be carted round with infantry companies, so the average grunt on patrol will have to suffer the risk of getting drone swarmed.

As Galloglaich said, I think we're still in the very early stages of drone technology and while the potential is still there, the current countermeasures aren't going to be standing still in their development either.

1. And i acknowledged the fragility. Repeatedly. I'm getting a bit tired of repeating myself TBH.

2. And your still missing the point,. The inaccuracy isn't a fire control problem, it's not a Rof problem, (there will be a slight effect but emphasis on slight), it's not a velocity of the target problem. It's a the gun is not that accurate problem. You can take all the time in the world you want, it won;t stop you missing most of the rounds because not taking enough time isn;t the problem. The gun just not being acurratte enough to achieve a high % hit rate is the problem. And thats not somthing we can just click our fingers and fix, where allready using some of the most acurratte gun systems on the planet as our basis here.

3. yes you can narrow the spread pattern of the canister round. As i allready noted. In fact if you want any of the fragments released by it to hit the drone you'll almost certainly have to do so. Again, as i allready noted. But that increases the odds that the pattern will simply completely miss the target all together. Because of point 2.

4. I acknowledged it will take 2 minutes, i even gave you that number. But you're not trying to knock down one piddly little drone, your trying to knock down part of a swarm numbering in the hundreds or thousands. Thus the longer it takes to get each kill the more time it;s going to take to kill them all and the more interceptor system you need to engage the drone swarm successfully.

5. Yes insurgents have gotten shootdowns. You don't hear about all the times they tried and failed. You given enough insurgents enough shots at a target with enough weapons and they will get kills. thats inevitable. It's like saying the sky is blue. Completely accurate but about as useful as a chocolate fireguard.

6. I don't get how the weight of the drones is relevant here? Your not assuming each soldier on the enemy side is carrying the drones are you? That would be dumb. Their drones with ranges measured in at least the dozen km range, likely considerably more. It would be far more logistically efficient to have dedicated platforms, probably in the humvee size category as thats a good compromise between platform size and carry capacity. That would allows a handful of vehicles to deploy 100's easily, (the volume of the drones is likely to be a bigger issue that a weight to be fair).

7. No the average grunt is not going to have to put up with the risk of being attacked, because if this nation is not willing to deploy covering assets then that nation isn't using infantry anymore. Either because they got all their infantry killed or because they;ve outright phased it out. When the drone to soldier cost ratios are skewed so far in favour of the drones that they cna field so many more drones than you can infantry it's not a risk of being attacked whilst on patrol. It's a certainty that they will be attacked and by numbers far exceeding that of the infantry. Thats the point of these drones, their so cheap they can be fielded in such numbers that there's no avoiding them even if 90% of them crash, get lost, are destroyed by enemy action, or fail to acquire a target.

@PhoneixPyre: it's called a shaped charge. The warhead, (plus stabilising fins, plus casing), of an AT4 weighs just 1,.8kg's and has 400mm of penetration, in a top down attack that is far more than all but the most heavily armoured MBT's posses. I doubt the kind of warhead a drone could carry would be quite that big and thus not enough to go through most MBT's, but it would be enough for nearly anything else.

[wolflance]

For man-portable drones I'm seeing things with total payloads measured in single-digit kilograms at best. That's not much. The only exceptions are artillery-launched and non-recoverable (called loitering munitions) that basically are missiles. And all of them are super fragile.

Do you have other information?
China's CH-901 drone carries a six pound warhead, still single digit and still not powerful enough to threaten a MBT, but capable to beat nearly every other armored vehicle. Its warhead is about the equivalent to a RPG warhead, and the drone + launch tube is slightly heavier than a RPG-7.

With some improvements or redesigns or new models, it shouldn't be too hard to increase the drone warhead payload to about 8-10 kg, or the equivalent of a Javelin missile, in the future. After all, currently Javelin missile is twice the weight of CH-901.

Loitering munition is closer to drone than to missile IMO (and is outright called as such in the news). Some of them are recoverable if no target is present. CH-901 is classified as a loitering munition as well, even though it can be configured with a camera and is recoverable and reusable.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

The Dutch police trained eagles to attack drones.

The project was scrapped, officially because the animals were too hard to train (https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/12/16767000/police-netherlands-eagles-rogue-drones) for this purpose (I would stop hunting if all I caught was inedible plastic), unofficially it might also have to do with someone realizing sheepishly that people who are serious about terror-drones would use larger and stronger models with metal propellers, which may be less bird-feet friendly.

[Vinyadan]

What's a "combat lithographer"?

[Max_Killjoy]

What's a "combat lithographer"?

I would guess someone who does lithographs of combat scenes -- an artist who observes combat, perhaps with either a reporter or with someone from the intelligence staff, and then does a lithograph.

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

E: I meant historical -- is this actually still a "job title" in some military branch somewhere?

[Brother Oni]

What's a "combat lithographer"?

Assuming you meant modern military, there's USMC MOS 4615 (http://www.mosdb.com/marine-corps/4615/mos/2862/):


Conceives and creates visual products for use in a broad range of areas including but not limited to Information Operations operational imagery command and public information recruiting briefs training investigations etc. using specialized electronic tools. Typical duties include web page design print multiple formats and sizes and combat documentation; manage transmit and archive imagery; operates commercial reproduction equipment and power-operated binging equipment to finish a bind products. NCOs draft reports official correspondence and budget; supervise and instruct personnel in the operation of all equipment and software related to MOS 4615 as well as supervising and organizing all aspects of production operations.

The US Army doesn't have a direct equivalent but does have Army Lithographer (MOS 21L (http://www.mosdb.com/army/21L/mos/1206/)/81L (http://www.mosdb.com/army/81L/mos/4327/)).

You're probably going to have to ask the former serving what exactly that all means, but it seems like you mass produce documents and reports. Mike_G can probably shed some light on why the Marine Corp calls theirs a 'combat lithographer', but possibly something to do with every marine being a rifleman?

[Mike_G]

Assuming you meant modern military, there's USMC MOS 4615 (http://www.mosdb.com/marine-corps/4615/mos/2862/):



The US Army doesn't have a direct equivalent but does have Army Lithographer (MOS 21L (http://www.mosdb.com/army/21L/mos/1206/)/81L (http://www.mosdb.com/army/81L/mos/4327/)).

You're probably going to have to ask the former serving what exactly that all means, but it seems like you mass produce documents and reports. Mike_G can probably shed some light on why the Marine Corp calls theirs a 'combat lithographer', but possibly something to do with every marine being a rifleman?

I think you're right on this one.

Pretty sure they just put "combat" in front of the title to remind everyone that while you may be a web page designer, by God, you're a MARINE web page designer.

Not sure they do a lot of "combat" lithography. Nothing in the job detail mentions being shot at while you do this stuff. Now, this may involve doing this stuff while forward deployed, and modern war the front is pretty ill defined.

But they're POGs.

[snowblizz]

Pretty sure they just put "combat" in front of the title to remind everyone that while you may be a web page designer, by God, you're a MARINE web page designer.


"Someone get charlie off my back here! I'm trying to post our latest Twitter update and reconfigure the SQL servers! #foxholewebdesigner #gettingshotatsucjs #semperfi".

:smallbiggrin:

[Lvl 2 Expert]

"Someone get charlie off my back here! I'm trying to post our latest Twitter update and reconfigure the SQL servers! #foxholewebdesigner #gettingshotatsucjs #semperfi".

:smallbiggrin:

"Let's turn this foxhole into a Firefoxhole."

"Grenade? I've got an app for that."

"They might have the Edge, but I have Chrome."

[Mike_G]

"Let's turn this foxhole into a Firefoxhole."

"Grenade? I've got an app for that."

"They might have the Edge, but I have Chrome."

It's the Marine Corps.

You know they're still using old Windows 3.1 compatible software configured for Netscape Navigator handed down by the Army.

[Carl]

Good lord those are so bad they should be banned by the geneva convention as WMD's. Still no match for TvTropes, but what s.

[Vinyadan]

Thanks for the answers, guys :smallbiggrin:

[Brother Oni]

Not sure they do a lot of "combat" lithography. Nothing in the job detail mentions being shot at while you do this stuff.

This sounds like a Monty Python sketch:

"Marine! The enemy are approaching! Prepare 100 explanatory pamphlets immediately in Farsi and Pashto, explaining that we will return fire if they do not retreat!"
"But sir, they're firing at us!"
"So prepare them faster! Use crayon if you have to!"
*Gasps of shock and horror throughout the platoon*
"Don't worry, we have additional rations coming in tomorrow."

:smalltongue:

[Yora]

What identifying insignia did Canadian and Australien soldiers and vehicles use in World War 2?

[Brother Oni]

What identifying insignia did Canadian and Australien soldiers and vehicles use in World War 2?

Could you clarify what exactly you mean?

Both the Canadian and Australian forces had patches to distinguish what division personnel belonged to; these were called Formation Patches for the Canadians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_Patches_of_the_Canadian_Army) and Unit Colour Patches for the Australians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_Colour_Patch).

If you meant a tactical recognition flash or a country identifier, I'll have to do more digging, but WWII era aircraft for both the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force used the famous RAF roundel:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/RAF_roundel.svg

An incident where this roundel caused a RAAF 11th Squadron Catalina to be mistaken for a Japanese aircraft by a USN Wildcat, lead to the removal of the inner red circle in the Pacific Theatre until after the war, when both Commonwealth countries redesigned their roundels (the Canadians changed the inner circle to a maple leaf while the Australians chose a kangaroo).

[Yora]

I was particularly thinking of something like the white star on American vehicles and the cross on German ones. But thinking of it, I am not even sure if any British vehicles except aircraft had such a thing.

[Storm Bringer]

What identifying insignia did Canadian and Australien soldiers and vehicles use in World War 2?


I was particularly thinking of something like the white star on American vehicles and the cross on German ones. But thinking of it, I am not even sure if any British vehicles except aircraft had such a thing.

In france post D-day, everyone used the white US star as a recognition marker, to simplify things (usually somewhere on the upper rear of a tank, where planes could see it but not Germans on the ground). The Commonwealth troops were all under UK command, with mostly UK equipment, and didn't have any national markings (apart form their formation patches, which would ID them as being in a commonwealth division/brigade)


before that, the only one i can find reference to was a square white-red-white
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRuyibQxIn8bsUo2iO2_7tnT26nzA_TJ h00VG3fN62vf_HVti2cqA) patch used in the deserts.


the aussie RAF used a blue/white (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RAAF_roundel_1943-46.svg) only verison of the roundrel in the pacific, the Canadians just used the standard RAF roundels (maybe with a maple leaf beside the cockpit or similar)

[Brother Oni]

This might interest some people here: Survival to amputation in pre-antibiotic era: a case study from a Longobard necropolis (6th-8th centuries AD), Micarelli et al, Journal of Anthropological Sciences, Vol 96, 2018 (http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Contents/2018vol96/Micarelli/Micarelli.pdf).

Summary is that they've recently excavated the body of an approximately 40-50 year old man from the late 6th Century in Verona, Italy; the man had an amputated right arm and had taken to wearing a knife in its place:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/04/13/11/4B1C82E900000578-0-image-a-27_1523614516375.jpg

The interesting thing is that he had been wearing it for a while - his teeth on the right side were badly worn down as he had been tightening the straps holding the knife with his teeth, his shoulder showed a bone ridge due to the extended position he had to hold it in to let him tighten the strap with his teeth, and the ends of the bones in his arm showed signs of pressure wearing consistent with that from a prothesis.

The body was found in graveyard used by the Longobard people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombards), so it's highly like that he lost his right hand in a fight or in battle and decided to replace it with a knife.

[Haighus]

This might interest some people here: Survival to amputation in pre-antibiotic era: a case study from a Longobard necropolis (6th-8th centuries AD), Micarelli et al, Journal of Anthropological Sciences, Vol 96, 2018 (http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Contents/2018vol96/Micarelli/Micarelli.pdf).

Summary is that they've recently excavated the body of an approximately 40-50 year old man from the late 6th Century in Verona, Italy; the man had an amputated right arm and had taken to wearing a knife in its place:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/04/13/11/4B1C82E900000578-0-image-a-27_1523614516375.jpg

The interesting thing is that he had been wearing it for a while - his teeth on the right side were badly worn down as he had been tightening the straps holding the knife with his teeth, his shoulder showed a bone ridge due to the extended position he had to hold it in to let him tighten the strap with his teeth, and the ends of the bones in his arm showed signs of pressure wearing consistent with that from a prothesis.

The body was found in graveyard used by the Longobard people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombards), so it's highly like that he lost his right hand in a fight or in battle and decided to replace it with a knife.
Fascinating. He must've been one tough bloke!

Having put my dominant hand out-of-action for several weeks a year ago, I think their conclusion that he used his teeth to tighten the strap is justified. I ended up using my teeth for quite a few tasks, like turning socks inside out.

[wolflance]

Two short questions:

1) When did the medieval cap-a-pie mail (i.e. mail armor with integrated coif and mittens) got replaces by separate coif and separate mail gloves?

2) The famous Battle of Visby, we know that the various armors and items belong to the Gotland militias (that lost the battle). So I'd like to know a bit about the equipment used by the winning (Danish) side.

[Martin Greywolf]

1) When did the medieval cap-a-pie mail (i.e. mail armor with integrated coif and mittens) got replaces by separate coif and separate mail gloves?


This... is not how it happened. Maybe. We really have no idea.

First instances of mail on head are starting to crop up at about 1050, and are pretty commonplace by 1200-1250. Thing is, we have no idea how they were worn, if there was a standard method or multiple ways and so on. They could mostly be integrated (Maciejowski bible has these when it's possible to tell), mostly separated or any other method you can think up.

The definite separation of head mail comes around with bascinets with aventail at 1350, but these are no longer mail coifs per se, just bits of mail attached to a helmet.

Mail gloves that are separate from the mail shirt are extremely rare, and only start to show up after 1300. This leads me to suspect a lot of their depictions may be artistic license - an artist trying to depict ye olde armor and just taking contemporary leather or plate gloves and making them out of mail. Things like these do happen and they tend to throw off eager but less informed reenactors fairly often, because you really need to study the exact manuscript to spot them.

[DrewID]

This... is not how it happened. Maybe. We really have no idea.

I recall one source saying that part of the reason that we have so few surviving examples of period mail is that is makes a great tool for scouring the rust off of cast iron pots. Which is terrific for ye olde beleaguered medieval cooks, but not so great for the mail in the long run.

DrewID

[wolflance]

This... is not how it happened. Maybe. We really have no idea.

First instances of mail on head are starting to crop up at about 1050, and are pretty commonplace by 1200-1250. Thing is, we have no idea how they were worn, if there was a standard method or multiple ways and so on. They could mostly be integrated (Maciejowski bible has these when it's possible to tell), mostly separated or any other method you can think up.

The definite separation of head mail comes around with bascinets with aventail at 1350, but these are no longer mail coifs per se, just bits of mail attached to a helmet.

Mail gloves that are separate from the mail shirt are extremely rare, and only start to show up after 1300. This leads me to suspect a lot of their depictions may be artistic license - an artist trying to depict ye olde armor and just taking contemporary leather or plate gloves and making them out of mail. Things like these do happen and they tend to throw off eager but less informed reenactors fairly often, because you really need to study the exact manuscript to spot them.
Is it? There are quite a lot of surviving mail armors from 15th century onward, and hardly any of them have attached glove (I've heard that some of them are converted from cap-a-pie mail too), so I presume the transition must've happened some time before.

Flipping through Manuscript Miniatures, most knights of the 1300 - 1350s are actually not very different from late 13th century knights. Dudes with what we usually associate with 14th century "transition armor" - plated limbs, coat of plates, bascinets, etc are in the minority, but definitely present and sometimes mixed with older-style knights.

[snowblizz]

2) The famous Battle of Visby, we know that the various armors and items belong to the Gotland militias (that lost the battle). So I'd like to know a bit about the equipment used by the winning (Danish) side.

They'd be wearing state of the art for a continental (western) medieval force. Denmark was comparatively rich and much more "continental" than the other Scandinavian nations. The Danish army would also have been to a high degree mercenary professionals, predominantly Germans.

[Lapak]

Is it? There are quite a lot of surviving mail armors from 15th century onward, and hardly any of them have attached glove (I've heard that some of them are converted from cap-a-pie mail too), so I presume the transition must've happened some time before.
I am not an armor expert, but seeing that my first thought would not have been 'aha, they had separate mail mittens I am missing' but instead 'aha, they must have used heavy leather or cloth gloves as hand protection with this body armor.'

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I recall one source saying that part of the reason that we have so few surviving examples of period mail is that is makes a great tool for scouring the rust off of cast iron pots. Which is terrific for ye olde beleaguered medieval cooks, but not so great for the mail in the long run.

DrewID

So you're saying that just like us, knights used their old clothes as cleaning rags? That's awesome.

(Also, I can indeed imagine mail would function like steelwool, but more resistant to wear.)

[Vinyadan]

Unrelated to weaponry, but they have found the hidden treasure hoard of Harold Bluetooth. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/16/treasure-of-legendary-danish-king-bluetooth-unearthed-in-germany

[rrgg]

Is it? There are quite a lot of surviving mail armors from 15th century onward, and hardly any of them have attached glove (I've heard that some of them are converted from cap-a-pie mail too), so I presume the transition must've happened some time before.

Flipping through Manuscript Miniatures, most knights of the 1300 - 1350s are actually not very different from late 13th century knights. Dudes with what we usually associate with 14th century "transition armor" - plated limbs, coat of plates, bascinets, etc are in the minority, but definitely present and sometimes mixed with older-style knights.

Mail gloves were definitely around in the late 16th century. Handling a pistol required a lot of finger dexterity which limited a cavalryman's hand protection options to either extremely well-articulated plate gauntlets or else gloves of very fine mail (alternatively, you could just wear nothing on your hands at all, which seems to have been the option more and more cuirassiers were going with).

That mainly has to do with pistols, but John Smythe seemed to think that there were other situations where it was useful to have more flexible or even removable hand protection. For instance ensign bearers:

"Also I would wish that all Ensignebearers should bee armed in this sort following a light vpright & sharp crowned Spanish burgonet, a Coller, a Cuyrasse with short tasses, or without tasses, and a backe with a paire of sleeues and gloues of fine maile, or without gloues of maile, to the intent that they may carry their Ensignes with the more ease;"

and spear-armed light cavalry:

"I would wish that they should bee armed with burgonets, or else with vpright morrions after the Spanish manner, with collers, cuirasses, and backs, and short tasses, and with sleeues of maile and gauntlets, or else gloues of maile in stead of gauntlets"

There is a surviving suit of very expensive "field armor" which was owned by John Smythe, but it just has mail sleeves combined with plate gauntlets.

Regarding depictions of knights during the transition to plate it might be that some of the changes are just hidden or don't show up very well in artwork. "The King's Mirror" for instance mentions a sort of early breastplate worn under the mail.

Edit: oh yeah, there also seem to have been fencing styles during the Elizabethan period based around having a sword in one hand and a mail glove on the other. Although I'm not really much of a fencing guy.

[Kiero]

Surely heavy leather gauntlets/gloves were a defensive option for the pistoleer cavalryman, too?

[snowblizz]

Surely heavy leather gauntlets/gloves were a defensive option for the pistoleer cavalryman, too?

Yes and no I guess. Riding glvoes are a thing but they definitely cannot be too heavy if you want to be able to handle pistols.

I do find the idea that you'd ride into battle without at least some basic ridinggloves a bit odd.

[gkathellar]

Edit: oh yeah, there also seem to have been fencing styles during the Elizabethan period based around having a sword in one hand and a mail glove on the other. Although I'm not really much of a fencing guy.

I think this is less a styles thing and more that historical single-sword systems tend to make extensive use of offhand blocks in general. Just as a matter of general policy, it's better to wear a glove or a gauntlet, rather than risk a barehanded deflection.

[Tobtor]

Unrelated to weaponry, but they have found the hidden treasure hoard of Harold Bluetooth. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/16/treasure-of-legendary-danish-king-bluetooth-unearthed-in-germany

Yeah... except that it mostly likely did NOT belong to Harold. There is no other evidence that it did than that it included coins minted by him, and that he operated in the area (went to it after a defeat). Could it have been his? Possibly, but why would Harold (the first Christian king), have a thors-hammer with him? Most archaeologist are in agreement that it is either a "pirate"-treasure or possibly linked with the (pagan) Jomsvikings.

It is also (comparatively) poor treasure. Surely kings treasure would include gold (giver of gold is the most used knning for "king").

Real treasure include gold (here the Fæsted treasure which include around 1,5kg of gold):
http://migogvejen.dk/images/lln_press/f%C3%A6stedred.jpg

[No brains]

I'm playing a character in a game right now that wears half plate and I could use some good examples of that kind of harness. Does anyone have any examples of half plate or another form of armor that offers roughly equivalent protection? I imagine some Eastern armors may have coverage that's roughly equivalent to half-harness and I'd like to have some creative options.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I'm playing a character in a game right now that wears half plate and I could use some good examples of that kind of harness. Does anyone have any examples of half plate or another form of armor that offers roughly equivalent protection? I imagine some Eastern armors may have coverage that's roughly equivalent to half-harness and I'd like to have some creative options.

I think you can basically go two ways. One is to leave the back elements off armor. Have just shin plates and shoe covers instead of full metal boots, a breastplate instead of a cuirass, and maybe combine it with a lighter helmet instead of a full knightly visor helmet. The other option is to have the armor consist of less elements, like leaving out the leg and arm plating, maybe replacing them with mail for a step in between. Any mix and match of those styles works as well, like front elements on the legs and body worn over a lighter mail shirt.

A third option might be to save on the complex parts like joints and gloves, but have all of the large plated parts in place.

[rrgg]

Surely heavy leather gauntlets/gloves were a defensive option for the pistoleer cavalryman, too?

Here's the gauntlets from John Smythe's field armor. They do include soft leather underneath, but leather gloves still don't seem to get mentioned as a possible form of hand protection and we still start to see quite a few illustrations where cavalry are bare-handed. It might be that soft leather on its own wasn't believed to provide enough protection to be worth it or many cavalrymen believed that bare hands provided much better grip.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/15/48/a7/1548a7d7ecdd720c1178fd4a7272a1ce.jpg

https://l7.alamy.com/zooms/6069792bf5f941549f56f6420c21a3b4/three-riders-with-guns-jacob-de-gheyn-ii-1599-g2kax0.jpg

Smythe apparently still thought gauntlets like these made a pistol more difficult to handle and suggested a design where the first two fingers of a pistoliers' gauntlet were replaced with very fine mail. Another option that gets mentioned in a few treatises is to only wear a gauntlet on the bridle hand, since that hand only has to hold the pistol steady while loading while the right hand did the more complex tasks. The bridle hand was also apparently a popular target for sword cuts, and some authors additionally recommend replacing the horse's reins with a metal chain so that the enemy can't slash it apart in combat.

[wolflance]

This... is not how it happened. Maybe. We really have no idea.

First instances of mail on head are starting to crop up at about 1050, and are pretty commonplace by 1200-1250. Thing is, we have no idea how they were worn, if there was a standard method or multiple ways and so on. They could mostly be integrated (Maciejowski bible has these when it's possible to tell), mostly separated or any other method you can think up.

The definite separation of head mail comes around with bascinets with aventail at 1350, but these are no longer mail coifs per se, just bits of mail attached to a helmet.

Mail gloves that are separate from the mail shirt are extremely rare, and only start to show up after 1300. This leads me to suspect a lot of their depictions may be artistic license - an artist trying to depict ye olde armor and just taking contemporary leather or plate gloves and making them out of mail. Things like these do happen and they tend to throw off eager but less informed reenactors fairly often, because you really need to study the exact manuscript to spot them.
I found the answer on my own - around 1320, although I suppose it didn't replace the cap-a-pie type completely.

http://www.berwelf.de/bilder/gegenstaende/waffen/kettenfaeustlinge.html

[Maquise]

Something I was wondering, did samurai have any orders or brotherhoods similar to the knightly orders in Medieval Europe?

[No brains]

I think you can basically go two ways. One is to leave the back elements off armor. Have just shin plates and shoe covers instead of full metal boots, a breastplate instead of a cuirass, and maybe combine it with a lighter helmet instead of a full knightly visor helmet. The other option is to have the armor consist of less elements, like leaving out the leg and arm plating, maybe replacing them with mail for a step in between. Any mix and match of those styles works as well, like front elements on the legs and body worn over a lighter mail shirt.

A third option might be to save on the complex parts like joints and gloves, but have all of the large plated parts in place.

I like that last option and may roll with that. Thank you.

Can I get an references on extant half harnesses? I believe one of Henry VIII's armors counts as well as the piece reproduced for Secrets of the Shining Knight on Nova.

As for helmet, I was thinking of a kettle hat or morion, but I don't know if those would clash with a half-harness chic.

One wild idea: are there any suits of samurai armor that could be equated to 'half-plate' in coverage?

[wolflance]

Something I was wondering, did samurai have any orders or brotherhoods similar to the knightly orders in Medieval Europe?
No, the closest you can get is some sort of clan alliance(?)

[Brother Oni]

One wild idea: are there any suits of samurai armor that could be equated to 'half-plate' in coverage?

I'm not sure what you mean by 'coverage' as any full tatami gusoku armour set with all the secondary armours is pretty much full coverage.

If you're talking about coverage by solid plates, then not really, as it's only the sets with nanban dou (solid metal breastplate derived from western styles that's often sold with a dent as evidence of the pistol proofing) that starts to resemble western half plate and even then, only the breastplate.

They still look impressive though; here's the armour of Uesugi Kenshin, one of the daimyo from the Sengoku Jidai civil war:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Kenshin_Uesugi's_armour.jpg


No, the closest you can get is some sort of clan alliance(?)

Depends - do retired samurai sohei count?

[wolflance]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'coverage' as any full tatami gusoku armour set with all the secondary armours is pretty much full coverage.

If you're talking about coverage by solid plates, then not really, as it's only the sets with nanban dou (solid metal breastplate derived from western styles that's often sold with a dent as evidence of the pistol proofing) that starts to resemble western half plate and even then, only the breastplate.

They still look impressive though; here's the armour of Uesugi Kenshin, one of the daimyo from the Sengoku Jidai civil war:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Kenshin_Uesugi's_armour.jpg

Early O-yoroi type armor is pretty close to half-plate in term of coverage IMO.

[snowblizz]

Early O-yoroi type armor is pretty close to half-plate in term of coverage IMO.
There's also a type of armour which leaves the back relatively unprotected, because that's where the front parts are attached together. It was considered armour for the brave (or foolish probably) because of it's inhernet weakness.


I'm not sure what you mean by 'coverage' as any full tatami gusoku armour set with all the secondary armours is pretty much full coverage.
I'm a bit of a purist here and consider almost all Samurai armour to not really be full coverage. There's just too many weak spots in even the fullest samurai armour compared to equivalent European full plate.

But the munitions grade armours like okashi gusoku would be rather les sprotective than a full harness, so in a sense effectively "half-plate".



As for helmet, I was thinking of a kettle hat or morion, but I don't know if those would clash with a half-harness chic.
I'd say on the contrary they fit well. Morions were usually worn (at atime) with less complete harnesses, cuirasses, shields, morion being the main protection of Spanish rondolleros e.g.


Something I was wondering, did samurai have any orders or brotherhoods similar to the knightly orders in Medieval Europe?
Not really.

Depends - do retired samurai sohei count?
I think the closest we can get are indeed the sohei though the Ikko-icki might qualify as well (a brotherhood of sorts and samurai not really attached to a lrod but an idea), though the latter was more a broad social moment, like those seen in the English Civil War, e.g. Levellers and Diggers.
The vast majority of samurai were in service to a lord, that's sorta inherent in the term, even the sohei had "lords" in the form of the temple they served.
To be fair most samurai clans did sort of start out as a military brotherhood anyway. But a self-sustained military broothehood people could more or less join freely with a organisation living on with no real direct allegiance to a lord, no those did not exist.

Like so much with samurai it's tantalisingly similar to western concepts yet totally removed when digging into it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Questions about horse nomads--

How big were the operational units (families? tribes? clans? whatever you call them, the pieces that would live and move together)? How much area would they roam over/claim/occupy over the course of a year?

I'm working on a smaller civilization that will all winter together and then spread out for the grazing season, coming back in the late fall and need to calibrate my expectations as to group size and total size.

I figure they'd make a loop of sorts (coming back a different path than they went out, and each group taking a different path from year to year to let the area recover). I was thinking that they'd splinter further as they went out (so near the winter camp they'd be in large groups and then at the furthest extent, where they'd spend most of the summer, they'd be a group of several families). Horses and cattle mainly.

The terrain is relatively lush temperate grasslands, better than the Great Plains before western colonists arrived. Some large predators, but no major persistent threats.

[Brother Oni]

Early O-yoroi type armor is pretty close to half-plate in term of coverage IMO.

While I agree O-yoroi is much closer to the same style of protection of half plate (critical areas protected by rigid armour), the coverage given by old style sode is significantly different to pauldrons, and there is no equivalent to the rerebrace (upper arm armour, between the forearm's vambrace and the shoulder's pauldron).

The other problem is that O-yoroi is supposedly very heavy (~30kg for a full set), expensive and restrictive in movement, pushing it very definitely into the cavalryman role, whereas half-plate was supposed to be lighter, cheaper and more flexible than full plate harness, thus intended for the foot sloggers.


From looking at other pictures, the definition of 'half plate' is a bit vague. As I understand the term, it's a helmet plus rigid plate protection for the chest, shoulders and arms; some only count the torso, there's a bit of flex between a breastplate (front only) and a cuirass (front and back), and others include upper thigh protection.


Questions about horse nomads--

How big were the operational units (families? tribes? clans? whatever you call them, the pieces that would live and move together)? How much area would they roam over/claim/occupy over the course of a year?

I've got some books on Mongol organisation before and during their unification by Genghis Khan if that's helpful, or were you thinking of a less aggressive culture?

[No brains]

Thank you all for the feedback on my question. :smallsmile:

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've got some books on Mongol organisation before and during their unification by Genghis Khan if that's helpful, or were you thinking of a less aggressive culture?

This culture's pretty isolated and more xenophobic than aggressive, but otherwise quite similar in structure. Having those ballpark numbers would be a great help. Even rough numbers would allow me to start narrowing down exactly how many of these I want and how much space it should occupy (which sets how big the friction is between them and their neighbors for space, as the nomads have religious/cultural objections to permanent structures "on their land" except for the winter quarters, which are sacred).

I was torn between the post-horse american indian tribes on the Great Plains and the steppe nomads (Mongols, etc) of central asia as my touchpoints.

[gkathellar]

Not really.

I think the closest we can get are indeed the sohei though the Ikko-icki might qualify as well (a brotherhood of sorts and samurai not really attached to a lrod but an idea), though the latter was more a broad social moment, like those seen in the English Civil War, e.g. Levellers and Diggers.
The vast majority of samurai were in service to a lord, that's sorta inherent in the term, even the sohei had "lords" in the form of the temple they served.
To be fair most samurai clans did sort of start out as a military brotherhood anyway. But a self-sustained military broothehood people could more or less join freely with a organisation living on with no real direct allegiance to a lord, no those did not exist.

Like so much with samurai it's tantalisingly similar to western concepts yet totally removed when digging into it.

Pre-Edo period, the term "samurai," encompassed a variety of professionally employed, highly trained soldiers. It's true that they had almost entirely co-opted the traditional nobility by the end of the Heian period, but plenty of so-called samurai were mercenaries and assorted troublemakers of low birth whose only claim to the title was that they were, in that particular moment working for someone with money and land. Hideyoshi himself was born a peasant, and while his circumstances were unusual, they weren't unique.

I'm also not sure your characterization of knightly brotherhoods is fair, given they had their own lands, vassals, leadership figures, lineages, and alliances - just as other feudal lords did. Nor did they universally accept everyone, and even those that did often drew distinctions between peasants and nobility who joined. I'd argue that while there's no perfect analog in feudal Japan, that's mostly a product of the multi-national scope of some brotherhoods; I'd say the various warrior-monks are an apt (if imperfect) point of comparison for exactly that reason.

[Max_Killjoy]

Pre-Edo period, the term "samurai," encompassed a variety of professionally employed, highly trained soldiers. It's true that they had almost entirely co-opted the traditional nobility by the end of the Heian period, but plenty of so-called samurai were mercenaries and assorted troublemakers of low birth whose only claim to the title was that they were, in that particular moment working for someone with money and land. Hideyoshi himself was born a peasant, and while his circumstances were unusual, they weren't unique.

I'm also not sure your characterization of knightly brotherhoods is fair, given they had their own lands, vassals, leadership figures, lineages, and alliances - just as other feudal lords did. Nor did they universally accept everyone, and even those that did often drew distinctions between peasants and nobility who joined. I'd argue that while there's no perfect analog in feudal Japan, that's mostly a product of the multi-national scope of some brotherhoods; I'd say the various warrior-monks are an apt (if imperfect) point of comparison for exactly that reason.

Indeed, it's very important to keep in mind that much of what we "know" about "samurai" and "bushido" is seen through multiple filters, such as modern western myth-making, early 20th-century Japanese nationalist mythmaking, Edo-period cultural/political propaganda, etc.

[Galloglaich]

Questions about horse nomads--

How big were the operational units (families? tribes? clans? whatever you call them, the pieces that would live and move together)? How much area would they roam over/claim/occupy over the course of a year?

Mongols organized on base ten, with the largest unit being a tumen, of 10,000 riders. Each tumen was made up of 10 groups of 1,000, each with its own commander, and those were broken up into ten groups of 100 and those in turn into ten groups of ten. The base ten thing was used by many types of steppe nomads in Central Asia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumen_(unit)

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

Tribes could be any size of course.



I figure they'd make a loop of sorts (coming back a different path than they went out, and each group taking a different path from year to year to let the area recover). I was thinking that they'd splinter further as they went out (so near the winter camp they'd be in large groups and then at the furthest extent, where they'd spend most of the summer, they'd be a group of several families). Horses and cattle mainly.

That is pretty similar to what the Lakota did (minus the cattle). I don't know what time of year but they came together and formed almost a city for a while before the buffalo hunt, they processed all the buffalo they killed and then dispersed back to smaller family and clan sized groups.

Armor
Worth mentioning as far as mail gloves - Italian burghers commonly wore those in a civilian context when they expected trouble (as noted by George Silver and confirmed by many Italians in their own writing).

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ed/1f/42/ed1f42d26b490d9ae7d4eaf8bf813bcf.jpg

For coifs etc., one good place to look are effigies. This one is 14th C. but there are a lot of really good (and precise) ones going back to the 13th. They usually have all the detail of the mans armor and personal weapons quite accurately.

G

[Galloglaich]

Flipping the Samurai thing on it's head - I think a close analogue to the Samurai of Japan were the Ministerials of Central Europe'

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

they started out as unfree henchmen with no rights or property of their own, literally serf knights, but were soon admitted into the caste (as opposed to Estate or Class) of the knights and given many of the same honor related rights, and over time they acquired land and titles as well, until (by the later 14th Century) they comprised much of the minor nobility in the Holy Roman Empire.

G

[Kiero]

Questions about horse nomads--

How big were the operational units (families? tribes? clans? whatever you call them, the pieces that would live and move together)? How much area would they roam over/claim/occupy over the course of a year?

I'm working on a smaller civilization that will all winter together and then spread out for the grazing season, coming back in the late fall and need to calibrate my expectations as to group size and total size.

I figure they'd make a loop of sorts (coming back a different path than they went out, and each group taking a different path from year to year to let the area recover). I was thinking that they'd splinter further as they went out (so near the winter camp they'd be in large groups and then at the furthest extent, where they'd spend most of the summer, they'd be a group of several families). Horses and cattle mainly.

The terrain is relatively lush temperate grasslands, better than the Great Plains before western colonists arrived. Some large predators, but no major persistent threats.

I think the inclusion of cattle is problematic here if the intended culture is genuinely nomadic. Simply put, cattle aren't nomadic, they're pastoral. Sure, they can migrate long distances if required, but they aren't built to be almost permanently on the move. Also note that a horse-people don't need cattle for milk and meat - they have horses for that.

I'm referring to earlier peoples like the Skythians and Sauromatians here, rather than the Mongols, but they had huge herds of ponies and horses which was all they needed. Mares gave them milk which could be turned into cheese and fermented into an alcoholic drink, they had enough spares that if hunting was sparse they could kill a small pony and eat it. In their culture you weren't a "rider" (as in a horse-warrior) unless you owned at least four ponies, lords had hundreds of mounts, kings thousands. The way they covered huge distances was by only riding any one mount for a few hours before changing again, leading the remaining ponies on a string behind them.

The other important point is that they weren't independent of settled communities. They ruled over a great area of settled communities providing them "protection" from other nomads. As long as they could keep other nomadic peoples from raiding the settled farmers under their protection, they could claim tribute for the service, including grain and other produce. Those communities were also a source of new recruits, and a place for older riders to retire to. Along with potential places to go to pasture in the winter.