Armoured vehicles crash through the California desert, churning up clouds of smothering white dust. Drones loiter unseen, methodically marking their targets before dive-bombing. Soldiers, some blistered by the sun, trudge through the heat with weapons slung over their shoulders.
For 10 days in late July, the US, Britain and their allies are training to fight what their commanders call “the warfare of the future”, using cutting-edge technologies and tactics in a vast wargame known as Project Convergence.
This year, the project is taking place at Fort Irwin, an American army base deep in the Mojave, where the dusty red landscape resembles the surface of Mars and is almost as unforgiving to life.
A mate used to have a business out there. In fact, I aided in financing it – no, a loan for a few weeks, not equity.
This is all in the Tom Clancy books, this is where the USians go to pay Red V Blue. Which means having a stock of Russian tanks, APCs etc.
Russian tanks are metric, USian Imperial. Thus someone needs to have a warehouse full of metric spanners (OK, and some spare parts). Which is what he bought, the shed full of metric spanners.
Which is a fun little business to have, no?
To give that authentic Russian Army experience, he should’ve set up a bar serving anti freeze cocktails.
Molotov.
Is this why the Yanks keep getting embroiled in the Middle East. because they have somewhere suitable to practice?
It would probably be best for the British Army to practice on recreations of the streets of Rotherham or Luton.
Why recreations? Why not just use the real thing?
Apparently, to build Merlins in WW2, th Yanks needed to get tools with UK threads so that maintenance could be done in the UK.
I once found that the rear lights on my Lotus were US threads, not available anywhere – until a pal dismantled a worn-out computer mainframe line printer for me!
Did it print out ‘Stopping’ on continuous paper all over the road when you hit the brakes ?
I installed one of these devices once. It had a bloody great light on top to tell you it was printing. It was like having the Tardis in the computer room, I kept on expecting the damn thing to disappear. The customer also proudly showed me their Videotron ( Hungarian ) printer that did both Latin and Cyrillic.
I asked an IBM salesman (yes a man it was that long ago) how fast his line printer was and he said three trees a minute.
I shipped some bespoke systems to Motorola in Chicago.
When one of them failed I flew over to investigate/repair. I discovered it was a bigger job than expected and needed a metric socket set to take it all apart.
Drove round for hours trying to find a shop/garage that sold them!
That must have been a very long time ago. Or you went to the wrong shops. There’s no problem buying metric sockets in the States.
Up until recently I was driving US build Chryslers. That was all metric.
Americans don’t use imperial. Their units of measurement are city block, football field, city bus, washing machine… traveling distances are measured in minutes.
The bastards don’t even use “five times the size of Wales”.
That’s because it’s a ridiculously small unit of measure. A Wales is a medium sized county here.
And weights, up to and including aircraft carriers, are given in pounds.
Yeah cos their tons are all short.
We use a modified imperial. 16 ounce pints which added up equate to a smaller gallon. 2,000 pound tons rather than 2,240. No one uses hundred weights. Metric is, however, slowly seeping in.
It’s hard to understand why you did that. The Imperial measures make sense if your realise the scales aren’t continuous. Ounces & pounds are for small everyday measures. You get an ounce by repeatedly dividing a pound. Stones through to tons works the same way. There’s no reason to cross the divide by having 2000lb ton. You don’t weigh something as big as a ton in pounds. Generally you don’t weigh them that accurately. It’s like when you quote some airliner at 250,000 pounds. I bet it isn’t. With or without the seat shelf row 36E?
Prior to the early 19th Century efforts to standardize weights and measurements were spotty at best. A gallon of whiskey could be different from a gallon of milk or could vary from place to place.
The British standardized the Imperial System in the 1820s but that was well after the American Revolution and the States never adopted the British system, instead going their own way, and probably just wanting to be different.
It’s a similar story with spellings as they could be all over the place, and though there were some earlier dictionaries people finally got serious about spelling standards in the first part of the 19th Century, again, well after the American Revolution. Noah Webster, when he wrote his dictionary, got rid of the extra u in so many words.
There was the old quote supposedly by Andrew Jackson, who grew up in the 18 Century that “it’s a pretty poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.” I once read some of the diaries of Lewis and Clark and came away impressed with the number of ways they found to spell Sioux.
The US adopted the “metric” system some time in the 1860s, we just never made it mandatory, or exclusive. Let people weigh and neasure, just as it suits their endeavours. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
llater,
llamas
Hence the lack of success of Soozie and the Banshees.
I would just like to state that the metric system was initially developed by the French and is therefore by definition wrongs.
There’s actually a fun story about Thomas Jefferson’s efforts to learn more about the metric system, which he was aware of from his time in France, and bring it to the US. An item weighing one kilo was sent to him but the ship was taken by British privateers and so Tom never received it.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/28/574044232/how-pirates-of-the-caribbean-hijacked-americas-metric-system
Was about 25 years I guess, I’ve been in (Metric) Cyprus for 23 now…
Not sure what Peak Karen knows about deep recce strikes, but she must know a fair bit if she’s in charge of them.
When they line up, they only stand 3 Deep.
v good
The Thin Red Line, as in Zulu.
You can’t run a Deep Recce Strike Brigade aground.
But you can run it around
It’s a weird setup. Loads of artillery, some (Ajax-mounted?) cavalry/recce units. And that’s it. No infantry, no tanks. By previous standards that would be considered unbalanced.
The Brigade is supposedly ‘designed to fight the “deep battle” – striking the enemy far beyond the front line, before their forces make contact with the main fighting divisions’.
Where do I sign up?
(Good luck with that says anyone who has watched Ukraine become a droned no mans land hellscape where they are dropping grenades down scaffold pipe air vents into underground bunkers.)
Ajax yes (though withdrawn for the time being but always a bag of shit from what I have read/been told) and Jackal, which is highly manoeuvrable but has very little in the way of protection.
I suppose you might argue that’s fine in derivatives for the SAS/SRR (though even that is very arguable now) but are they really expecting to send the Household Cavalry into battle 100km behind enemy lines in these?
Arguably when main battle tanks are being taken out by nerds 250km away protection is irrelevant anyway.
Arguably when main battle tanks are being taken out by nerds 250km away protection is irrelevant anyway.
No. People keep drawing the wrong lessons from tank warfare in Ukraine.
Lot of people think the horrible attrition rates of tanks means drones have made them obsolete. But tanks are meant to take damage, be repaired, and sent back to the front. The USSR built approx 50,000 tanks in WW2. And they lost approx 50,000 in battle – yet won the war. Most tanks that get stopped in Ukraine are mobility kills, the crew is usually fine if they can dodge follow up drones, and the hull is soon towed away to fight another day.
The reason drones haven’t usurped the tank, merely made an infantryman’s life shorter and more miserable, is because flying drones do what tanks can. We still need tanks in 2026 to do the same job they were built for in 1916 – a mobile and heavily armoured gun platform that can punch holes in the enemy’s fortified positions. Can’t take or hold territory with drones, but if your Chieftain breaks down in a useful spot, it can wreak havoc on any Russians coming down the road.
Ukraine and Russia can’t get enough tanks, they could do with thousands more. Drone warfare means tanks urgently need better protection (remember people laughing at the “cope cages”? Turns out they’re a cheap and effective screen against most drone types) and onboard EW. But the tank itself will never be irrelevant for as long as ground war exists – we just need more, better and smarter tanks.
Not ~ 140 very expensive (because low production numbers) Challenger 3s. That’s like only bringing one can of Kestrel to the party. You’re not going to have a good time.
Tanks remain very vulnerable to reconnaissance drones and out of line of sight self propelled guns working together. The very cheap drop spots the tank, sends the coordinates to the SPG which shoots and is already scooting to a new location to hide in before the shell hits. The drone goes on to check if a second hit is needed.
Most tanks that get stopped in Ukraine are mobility kills, the crew is usually fine if they can dodge follow up drones
If.
The USSR built approx 50,000 tanks in WW2. And they lost approx 50,000 in battle – yet won the war.
I am talking about western countries. The Russian soldier of 1941-45 was a very different beast to the modern British or American soldier, in many many ways.
What kind of war do you personally see Britain fighting now in which even 100 men are lost in a day and 300 injured?
I am not convinced we could sustain that for more than a week against an invading army, never mind on the Steppes.
How long could the US sustain 500/1500 per day?
We still need tanks in 2026 to do the same job they were built for in 1916 – a mobile and heavily armoured gun platform that can punch holes in the enemy’s fortified positions.
This is precisely what is not happening now because infantry accompanying the tanks (and the tanks themselves) are being destroyed. I don’t personally believe the western figures for Russian casualties, but I do believe that it is becoming next to impossible to conduct major ground operations against an enemy equipped with significant numbers of even half-sophisticated drones. Op Certain Death is never that popular.
Can’t take or hold territory with drones
Arguable. You can’t take or hold territory with aircraft, but the mistake is to think of drones like aircraft.
For a start, they are increasingly not just aircraft. There are tank-link drones, logistics drones, machine gun drones etc etc. I expect biped drones are on their way (quadrupeds alre already here).
But the flying variants combine the better elements of aircraft with fewer of the downsides. They are not expensive. The pilots are at no risk. They can stay up for many hours, and eventually will be able to do so for days, with changes of pilots or no pilot at all.
They also combine some of the better elements of the infantryman without some of the downsides. Like an infantryman, they can enter buildings. They don’t hesitate at the door. It doesn’t matter if they get destroyed. They can carry a wider variety of ammunition. They don’t need sleep or food. Each operator has a situational awareness greater than any man fighting in any war ever until this point.
I see no particular doctrinal reason why you couldn’t take territory and hold it with drones. The holding bit is already happening.
But the tank itself will never be irrelevant for as long as ground war exists –
But I think that we are entering an era when ground war does not exist, if by ground war we mean infantry advancing to contact, engaging with and destroying the enemy – and if not that, then what?
we just need more, better and smarter tanks.
Wunderwaffen!
If.
Yes? Are you thinking tankers are getting slaughtered on the regular? They’re not, because they have several inches of armour. What usually happens is, Ukie or Russian boys get hit in the track, and either button up until it’s safe to leg it into the forest, or jump out immediately and get back to relative safety.
Can’t do that in a Land Rover.
What kind of war do you personally see Britain fighting now in which even 100 men are lost in a day and 300 injured?
I am not convinced we could sustain that for more than a week against an invading army, never mind on the Steppes.
How long could the US sustain 500/1500 per day?
Doesn’t matter what I personally see or think, and the willingness of the public and government to sustain casualties tends to flex up as wars go on. A combatant that “can’t” sustain and regenerate casualties can’t win, natch.
I agree with Judge Holden on this. War is always waiting for us, whether we like it or not. The only decision we have to make is whether we intend to win.
This is precisely what is not happening now because infantry accompanying the tanks (and the tanks themselves) are being destroyed. I don’t personally believe the western figures for Russian casualties, but I do believe that it is becoming next to impossible to conduct major ground operations against an enemy equipped with significant numbers of even half-sophisticated drones. Op Certain Death is never that popular.
Just because the snail is moving slowly, doesn’t mean it’s not covering ground. Tanks are being used as described in Ukraine, whenever they can get them. War reverting to semi-static positional attrition is a temporary feature of current technology, as it was in 1914.
They also combine some of the better elements of the infantryman without some of the downsides. Like an infantryman, they can enter buildings. They don’t hesitate at the door. It doesn’t matter if they get destroyed. They can carry a wider variety of ammunition. They don’t need sleep or food. Each operator has a situational awareness greater than any man fighting in any war ever until this point.
I see no particular doctrinal reason why you couldn’t take territory and hold it with drones. The holding bit is already happening
Yes, the only problem is these autonomous intelligent killbots don’t currently exist, are in embryonic prototype phase, and might not be available in sufficient quantities as reliably field tested weapons for decades, if ever. Meanwhile, tanks.
Wunderwaffen!
Ahem.
But I think that we are entering an era when ground war does not exist, if by ground war we mean infantry advancing to contact, engaging with and destroying the enemy – and if not that, then what?
There’s an astonishing number of Ukrainian and Russian infantry being chewed up for an era that’s about to not exist. Controlling territory means putting men on the ground, not remote control robots by themselves, for many obvious reasons. Drones complement, they don’t replace people, despite the pathetic fantasy of the Royal Navy. As long as territory has value, men will fight over it, which means bayonets and big guns will never go out of style.
Are you thinking tankers are getting slaughtered on the regular?
I am thinking that, yes.
Can’t do that in a Land Rover.
Indeed you can’t! This is a point which supports my argument about drones.
Doesn’t matter what I personally see or think
It does if you’re putting forward a proposition upon which it has a bearing. (The answer is: there is no war that the British public will tolerate which sees 100 blokes dying every day, and this attrition rate is made vastly more likely by drones.)
Yes, the only problem is these autonomous intelligent killbots don’t currently exist,
Who mentioned ‘autonomous intelligent killbots’?
Ahem.
See above – you mentioned ‘better smarter tanks’ of which we need more – the wunderwaffen I mentioned. I didn’t mention ‘autonomous intelligent killbots’ but you pretended I did. I bet my drones – autonomous or otherwise – will defeat your better smarter tanks, because quantity has a quality all of its own, (and we’re bankrupt already).
There’s an astonishing number of Ukrainian and Russian infantry being chewed up for an era that’s about to not exist.
‘About to.’ But even then, this is a very odd kind of war now.
Controlling territory means putting men on the ground, not remote control robots by themselves, for many obvious reasons.
Again, ‘remote control robots’ are irrelevant and unnecessary – they’ll just nail down the lid when they arrive, but until then you just switch out the operator in the shipping container wherever.
I read a lot that ‘controlling territory mean putting men on the ground’?
Is that actually true?
It certainly used to be, and it’s undeniably still hard to take ground without men in certain circs, as the Yanks are finding in Iran.
This is doubly, trebly or even quadruply true when you’re trying not to destroy sensitive oil infrastructure and kill a million civilians.
But ultimately an infantryman is just a carrying and pointing device for a rifle, and he gets tired, and he can’t carry much ammunition, and he needs to stop to eat and ablute, and he needs to go home now and then.
We are in the very early days of drone warfare.
Today they’re like Macedonians with spears, basically.
This time next week they’ll be Romans with gladiuses (gladii?), and the week after that they’ll be armed with muskets and wondering whether red is the right colour.
Eventually they will certainly be able to take and hold ground – the only question is how long is ‘eventually’.
I am thinking that, yes.
Well, yer wrong. Tankers are specialists, much as each side would love to kill each other’s specialists they’ve got a better survival rate than infantry.
The answer is: there is no war that the British public will tolerate which sees 100 blokes dying every day, and this attrition rate is made vastly more likely by drones
Possible. But I don’t think anyone in Moscow expected a million+ casualties and 5 years of trench warfare in 2022. You might have thought, in 2022, that the Russians wouldn’t have put up with those losses. After all, it’s not 1941 and Russia has negative fertility rates. Russians are not Brits, of course, unless they sneak in via dinghy and claim asylum.
But the British population has already put up with horrors beyond our imagination in the innocent, brighter days of the 1990’s. The “grooming” gangs, COVID lockdowns, government ministers threatening to exile you from society if you didn’t get vaccinated, the psychological toll of experiencing “loss of home” as formerly British communities are taken over by foreign peoples, made worse by the constant (but necessary) gaslighting to celebrate your own dispossession and erasure from the land your ancestors built.
You don’t think Brits can be persuaded to accept 100 deaths a day? I say, you will be surprised at how quickly unimaginable horror can become mundane. Ask Ukrainians.
Who mentioned ‘autonomous intelligent killbots’?
Sorry. Terrible habit. Was thinking of the logical outcome of your suggestions re: drones.
To be able to do the things you want them to do, they need to be autonomous. Can’t rely on remote control via radio waves in a contested EW environment. To be autonomous implies enough “intelligence” to determine friend from foe, pathfind around obstacles, not be fooled by a piece of cardboard saying “baby milk factory”, right? All very doable with the AI smartphone chips coming onto the market, local lightweight models, yadda yadda.
We are definitely going to get autonomous intelligent killbots. The Skynet future is inevitable, because the advantages you described are irresistible. And the full power of autonomy is only unleashed, natch, when you remove the pesky slow humans from the algorithmic kill chain. That way, an AI enabled drone swarm can detect, ID, and formulate a firing solution for a potential threat (suddenly unmasked SAM, say) and have a Tomahawk or 120mm artillery fire en route to the enemy position before a human radar operator could have spat out his coffee.
Otherwise, you’re reliant on radio or satellite connection for your drones, or fibre optic cable if you’re on the front line.
I read a lot that ‘controlling territory mean putting men on the ground’?
Is that actually true?
Yes. The only reliable way to control territory is to exercise actual, physical authority over it in the form of armed men.
Otherwise, as with Iran, your choices are limited to bombing them until a more tolerable regime appears, which might be never.
You can achieve fire control over territory, but it’s not the same thing. Also nb the political and psychological dimensions of warfare, and what that means for “occupation”.
See? This field marshal business is easy peasy. Give me an expensive baton.
But ultimately an infantryman is just a carrying and pointing device for a rifle, and he gets tired, and he can’t carry much ammunition, and he needs to stop to eat and ablute, and he needs to go home now and then.
Oh gawd, no. Sorry, you’ve gotten it all wrong.
The rifle is only a tool the infantryman carries. It’s not any more particularly significant than a compass, an Ammeter, or a thermonuclear bomb. All just tools.
Tools help you win wars, but it’s men who actually fight. The British soldier himself is the weapon (and I say that with love). Armaments a mere cost of doing business, of getting Tommy from Brighton to Berlin. The infantryman is a living, breathing extension of the power of the state, its sovereignty incarnate. His presence, as occupier of a defeated and subjugated territory, is absolutely necessary for the subjugation part to stick. Conquering territory just means “our guys decide what happens in that area of the map” and that’s a very human problem.
This time next week they’ll be Romans with gladiuses (gladii?)
Don’t ask me. A miserable Latin scholar, I was. Should I ever meet a time-crossed lost Roman legion, I’m afraid I will embarass myself asking “Porto portas portat, portamus portatis portant?”
But the confusion should give ol’ Steve enough time to formulate an escape plan. For you never want to tangle with Italians.
Tried replying but it’s in spam :
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Drones allow you to skip over the front line and decimate the lightly armored supply line feeding the enemies advance.
In WW2 Patton had a supply line called the Red Ball Express – Wikipedia supporting his lightning fast tank advance across Europe. At its peak, it operated 5,958 vehicles and carried about 12,500 tons of supplies per day. Drone warfare would have stalled it and the tank advance it supported.
Drone warfare would have stalled it and the tank advance it supported.
Yes, until they put up cope cages, aggressively jammed enemy control frequencies, and learned to shoot down drones easily.
Which is what’s happening to drones. It’s just another arms race.
That’s the way I see it. For a start you shouldn’t using tanks as artillery once the forward observation need is fulfilled. And an autonomous vehicle carrying 4 missiles costing 50k beats a multi-crewed MBT costing 100m. Losing the autonomous vehicle is cheaper than recovering a damaged MBT
As for infantry, the argument is “to hold ground”. Why?
And an autonomous vehicle carrying 4 missiles costing 50k
£50K? Muahahahaha. Wait till senior officers mandate 6,000 change requests that push the cost up to £500m apiece, fitted for-but-not-with missiles, and those same officers later accept fabulous job opportunities with the lucky vendor.
It’s just a pity that nobody told the Pentagon ten years ago that the warfare of the future would be drones and so on. Why do professional soldiers (and sailors and airmen) miss the bloody obvious so often?
No doubt there were some planners who said “Have you seen these drone things? I wonder what we could do with them.”, but they didn’t get listened to by Generals.
Why are they training in a desert? The most likely war fighting environment where drones will play a significant role is urban
Have you not seen what’s happening in Ukraine? Large flat arable areas have become no-go zones for main battle tanks, never mind infantry.
Ukraine is rather atypical. It’s what happens when an attack runs into an impenetrable defense. You end up with a battle of attrition. No sensible military leader should get into a battle of attrition.
If the Russian military had had any sense they would have disengaged on about day 6. The plan had failed. How many other military are going to be that stupid?
Ukraine is rather atypical
That depends on where you believe the main Russian threat to NATO will appear when they reconstitute.
A lot of thinking is that Russia would most likely manufacture an incursion in to one of the Baltic states to test NATO’s political will and that would require tank warfare to defend the borders or delay the incursion.
That depends if you believe Russia are a threat to NATO. I find it hard to believe that the Russian army is bogged down in Ukraine by a much numerically smaller army yet could suddenly race across Europe unopposed.
In that thinking there has been some form of end to the Russia Ukraine war and Russia, having transformed itself in to a war economy, can reconstitute its army in 2 to 3 years.
I’m not saying I agree or disagree, I haven’t got access to the intelligence, but it’s the scenario NATO’s planners are actively considering.
So the Russians are going to send their army into another possible battle of attrition? Once you’ve engaged it’s difficult to disengage.
Warsaw Pact Wargame Europe was a run to the Atlantic coast. A war with a victory at the end of it. There’s nothing in Europe now that finishes with a Russian victory. The best that could be achieved is take some ground & hold it. Ukraine 2
I’m not saying they wouldn’t do it. Just that it doesn’t make any sense. But Ukraine didn’t make much sense.
Russia’s aim is to weaken if not cause the breakup of NATO. There are about 450,000 ethnic Russians in Latvia, all Russia needs to do is come up with a pretence that they need protecting, invade and take over a town to protect them.
Will NATO have the political will to preemptively stop them before they invade, reinforce the border before they invade or if they do invade fight to throw them out?
This will go alongside a lot of hybrid warfare, Russia isn’t mapping all the undersea cables around our shores for fun, for example.
Once their first plan failed I was mystified the Russians didn’t use ballistic missiles to take out all the bridges (about 14) crossing the Dnipro river. This would divide Ukraine in two and make it very very difficult for Ukraine to supply their army with weapons from the West.
Perceptive. Modern war is not really about the FEBA. The forward edge of the battle area. It’s about the logistics to it.
Which is what Ukraine is doing to the Russians. Hitting their logistics train right back into Central Russia.
WarGame Europe was about getting to the Atlantic coast & cutting Europe in two before the Atlantic Air/Sea Bridge was established. Europe dies on the vine.
I don’t disagree – I’m just saying that drones work very well in the open.
They’re training for it because if they didn’t demonstrate and acquire that capability they’d be involved in some very short and one-sided battles.
I said elsewhere that I think we’re seeing the dying stages of land warfare between peer forces.
If you think back to GW1, and the ease with which vast numbers of Iraqi troops and armour were pushed out of the way by technologically superior and better motivated and trained allied troops, would that have happened if Saddam had had vast reservoirs of today’s drones?
I doubt it.
“How many other military are going to be that stupid?” – most of them.
I’d guess it was because drones became popular because they’re cheap and easily available.
Naturally if you’re offering something new to the military, it’s an all-singing all-dancing thing that costs a million or so.
Here’s my theory, based (in part) on personal observation.
Proper militaries train long, hard and often on the kit that they have. The troops get very, very good at using it, know it inside out, can fix it, live with its idiosyncracies.
Along comes something new. The budget was biased to the hardware, never enough for the training. But there are tasks to complete and deadlines to be met, so they instinctively fall back to what they know so well. And if they can’t make the new stuff fit into the old ways of working, it automatically gets downgraded, both in application and reputation.
Every infantryman will tell you that the new rifle is junk, while the one issued when he joined up was a pearl of perfection. (Well, maybe not the L85, but you know what I mean). Every new tank is useless, every new radio is a nightmare, every jet is a disaster. I’ve seen programme money being re-purposed to create an emulator so that the new system runs just like the old system did. Naval vessels crash into each other because the bridge watch couldn’t fathom a steering system that didn’t have a wheel that you turned. Bitchin’ Betty had to tell the pilot 153 things not to do in the new cockpit, that he used to do in the old cockpit. With every change from what was so carefully and exhaustively trained, military inertia is strengthened.
Some cultures can overcome this. The Israelis, with a short-service conscript military that ensures continuous churn and new input, doesn’t have the same stasis – they embrace change. But most Western militaries, which consider themselves ‘professional’, career institutions, become just another government bureaucracy – top-heavy, set in their ways, slaves to tradition, and concerned above all with organizational growth and stability.
llater,
llamas
Thank you for that. It’s consistent with my father’s observation about the British Army during The War: the best officers, in his experience, came from “civvy street” or the reserves. The professionals weren’t much cop.
I’m minded of a story told by Nevil Shute (Norway) about his dealings with military officers, primarily Naval officers, during his time as RNVR during WW2. Whenever they saw a regular RN officer who took initiative or embraced new ideas, he and his fellow Hostilities-Only colleagues would observe ‘He’s a good one. I bet he has private means’. Even in wartime, a regular or ‘career’ officer who relied only on his pay would often think first about his career before risking anything that might be seen as stepping outside ‘the way things are done’.
llater,
llamas
Ha! Dad was offered a promotion he didn’t want. The Colonel said “But think of the extra money.” Dad replied “But I already earn more than you do.” (Mum was at home successfully keeping the business running.)
I do sometimes wonder why the British Army is still capable of fielding cavalry in armour with swords. But the horsedrawn artillery’s a nice touch.
Two colleagues of mine decided to have a sword fight with their Royal Navy ceremonial swords. It didn’t end well, but fortunately only required outpatient treatment.
Excellent prose by Benedict Smith.
You see video shorts of drones killing soldiers in the Donbas with the poor infantryman trying to shoot down or hide from the drone that is about to kill him.
Sometimes the soldier fires a gun (shot?), hits the drone and survives, but I wonder what the latest best defensive ammo is that can be fired from a gun. A bag of dust perhaps, gives you a double chance of making you invisible to the drone’s camera and also damaging its rotors.
The soldiers usually panic and shoot wildly at the drone.
Issuing the troops with shotguns might help.
The USAAC and the USAF used to train aerial gunners (in part) with skeet shooting, which is why many older AF bases had world-standard skeet and trap fields right on the base. They’re mostly gone now, the last one I knew of of my own knowledge was at Wurtsmith AFB, but that’s a private club now.
llater,
llamas
I did read somewhere that later in the war the USAF had worked out that bomber gunners trying to hit enemy fighters by actually leading them and properly aiming was doomed to fail hard. In the heat of battle it really wasn’t possible to do, other than by blind luck, given the speed with which an attacking fighter would pass across the gunners vison arc. Instead they did statistical analysis that predicted the path an attacking fighter would take, based on where he started his attack run, and told the gunners to just shoot into those boxes of empty sky. Fill certain areas of sky with lead and statistically more fighters would have to pass through those boxes and get hit than if you actively targeted them. And this proved hard to get the gunners to do, because they all wanted to shoot at the enemy, not bits of empty sky he might fly into. Even though the latter had a significantly greater chance of shooting him down.
No idea if its true or not.
Tungsten shot in a shotgun. There was an order floating around the market for just this 6 months back…..
Lead free. That’s fookin’ great.
Lead is overrated unless your aim is to kill by slow poisoning. It’s really big plus is that its cheap.
Tungsten has a density of 19.25 compared with lead at 11.34
in fact its very slightly denser than depleted uranium. It’s also as hard as tool steel. Both of these properties give it range and stopping power though Tungsten carbide is preferred in armor piercing bullets as its even harder and approaching diamond hardness.
So lead shot can be propelled at greater velocity.
I shoot the hippopotamus
With bullets made of platinum,
Because if I use leaden ones,
His hide is sure to flatten ’em.
Belaire Hillock