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

[Brother Oni]

Real World Weapon, Armour and Tactics Thread XXI

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

A few rules for this thread:

• This thread is for asking questions about how weapons, armour and tactics really work. As such, it's not going to include game rule statistics. If you have such a question, especially if it stems from an answer or question in this thread, feel free to start a new thread and include a link back to here. If you do ask a rule question here, you'll be asked to move it elsewhere, and then we'll be happy to help out with it.
  
• Any weapon or time period is open for questions. Medieval and ancient warfare questions seem to predominate, but since there are many games set in other periods as well, feel free to ask about any weapon. This includes futuristic ones - but be aware that these will be likely assessed according to their real life feasibility. Thus, phasers, for example, will be talked about in real-world science and physics terms rather than the Star Trek canon. If you want to discuss a fictional weapon from a particular source according to the canonical explanation, please start a new thread for it.
  
• Please try to cite your claims if possible. If you know of a citation for a particular piece of information, please include it. However, everyone should be aware that sometimes even the experts don't agree, so it's quite possible to have two conflicting answers to the same question. This isn't a problem; the asker of the question can examine the information and decide which side to go with. The purpose of the thread is to provide as much information as possible. Debates are fine, but be sure to keep it a friendly debate (even if the experts can't!).
  
• No modern real-world political discussion. As the great Carl von Clausevitz once said, "War is merely the continuation of policy by other means," so politics and war are heavily intertwined. However, politics are a big hot-button issue and one banned on these boards, so avoid political analysis if at all possible (this thread is primarily about military hardware). There's more leeway on this for anything prior to about 1800, but be very careful with all of it, and anything past 1900 is surely not open for analysis (These are arbitrary dates but any dates would be, and these are felt to be reasonable).
  
• No graphic descriptions. War is violent, dirty, and horrific, and anyone discussing it should be keenly aware of that. However, on this board graphic descriptions of violence (or sexuality) are not allowed, so please avoid them.

With that done, have at and enjoy yourselves!

Spoiler: Previous threads

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[Vinyadan]

An image I found interesting:

[Knaight]

This isn't quite in the tactics category, but how did ancient armies tend to handle hygiene? I'm familiar with some of the specifics on the Roman side, including exactly which diseases predominated and how they were fought (to some extent, I'm not claiming expertise), but I'm wondering about other standards. Were there any particularly widespread techniques? Were there any really effective techniques that particular cultures got ahold of? Basically, if getting a surface level understanding, what particulars are worth learning?

[Gnoman]

This isn't quite in the tactics category, but how did ancient armies tend to handle hygiene? I'm familiar with some of the specifics on the Roman side, including exactly which diseases predominated and how they were fought (to some extent, I'm not claiming expertise), but I'm wondering about other standards. Were there any particularly widespread techniques? Were there any really effective techniques that particular cultures got ahold of? Basically, if getting a surface level understanding, what particulars are worth learning?

Hygiene is most obvious by it's own absence up until shockingly modern times, militarily speaking. As late as the American Civil War it was far from unusual to find basics such as isolating the latrine trenches from water sources to be largely ignored.

[fusilier]

An image I found interesting:

They appear to be firing the cannon with a hot "wire" which would have been heated to red hot (by the brazier to the left), and then thrust through the vent hole.

[Brother Oni]

An image I found interesting:

Spoiler

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Unless it's artistic interpretation, they also have appeared to have stuck the rear end of the cannon into the ground so that it get better elevation, maybe to turn it into a bombard, so the shot can clear the walls?

This isn't quite in the tactics category, but how did ancient armies tend to handle hygiene? I'm familiar with some of the specifics on the Roman side, including exactly which diseases predominated and how they were fought (to some extent, I'm not claiming expertise), but I'm wondering about other standards. Were there any particularly widespread techniques? Were there any really effective techniques that particular cultures got ahold of? Basically, if getting a surface level understanding, what particulars are worth learning?

I've found a journal article that covers water supply hygiene in Chinese armies, but I don't have access to anything other than the abstract: Hygiene of Water Supply in Ancient China′s Army by Gong.

Basically water supply hygiene was very important - during the Zhou Dynasty (10th-3rd century BC), a rear service (logistics) official position called the Qiehu was established, whose sole job was to ensure the siting and digging of military wells. Various references to the importance of water hygiene continue through various Dynasties, all the way up to the last dynasty, the Qing.

There looks to be an even more useful article, The Controlling Measures of Epidemic Diseases Taken by the Chinese Ancient Governments by Shi, but the abstract isn't particularly useful by itself.

On a side note, I hate it when article abstracts do that - it's the scientific equivalent of getting [redacted] teased.

[fusilier]

Unless it's artistic interpretation, they also have appeared to have stuck the rear end of the cannon into the ground so that it get better elevation, maybe to turn it into a bombard, so the shot can clear the walls?

Hmmm. I interpreted it as poorly rendered perspective (not uncommon in medieval style artwork). But it could be as you described, although I'm not aware of such a practice.

[Mr Beer]

Unless it's artistic interpretation, they also have appeared to have stuck the rear end of the cannon into the ground so that it get better elevation, maybe to turn it into a bombard, so the shot can clear the walls?

Definitely looks like it to me, like it's an impromptu mortar. The archer is a possible point of comparison, looks like he's aiming upwards to shoot/suppress enemies on the battlements while the assault takes place. The cannon is pointing even more to the vertical.

[Brother Oni]

Hmmm. I interpreted it as poorly rendered perspective (not uncommon in medieval style artwork). But it could be as you described, although I'm not aware of such a practice.

After some thought, I'm inclined to agree with you on it being perspective rather than spiking it in. Analysing the picture a little, with a couple of assumptions:

The cannon is attached to a wheeled carriage, which means it's big enough to fit one and heavy enough to require one (or just enough of a pain in the arse to move about to need wheels).

This puts spiking just the carriage's limber into the ground for additional elevation into a dubious light as it would have to support the weight of cannon itself, the rest of the carriage and the recoil when it was fired, which is a bit of a tall order.
I've seen replica ECW-era cannon in action and the recoil is not insubstantial, even for small cannon. Stressing the limber in this way sounds like a good recipe for breaking it.

Bombards without a wheeled carriage achieved additional elevation by means of siting it on a hill, planks placed under the front end and liberal amounts of dirt shovelling. Siting a wheeled cannon on a slope or some other precarious base sounds like a excellent way of getting it to disappear down the slope or another accident when fired, so this method was probably very carefully used, if at all.

[snowblizz]

After some thought, I'm inclined to agree with you on it being perspective rather than spiking it in. Analysing the picture a little, with a couple of assumptions:

The cannon is attached to a wheeled carriage, which means it's big enough to fit one and heavy enough to require one (or just enough of a pain in the arse to move about to need wheels).

This puts spiking just the carriage's limber into the ground for additional elevation into a dubious light as it would have to support the weight of cannon itself, the rest of the carriage and the recoil when it was fired, which is a bit of a tall order.
I've seen replica ECW-era cannon in action and the recoil is not insubstantial, even for small cannon. Stressing the limber in this way sounds like a good recipe for breaking it.

Bombards without a wheeled carriage achieved additional elevation by means of siting it on a hill, planks placed under the front end and liberal amounts of dirt shovelling. Siting a wheeled cannon on a slope or some other precarious base sounds like a excellent way of getting it to disappear down the slope or another accident when fired, so this method was probably very carefully used, if at all.

I was thinking much the same. Just standing it up like that I'm willing to say no way it's not tearing the limber to shreds when fired. If you can get it balanced enough.
More inclined to see it as an perspective issue with the rather logical solution of having the limber dig into the dirt to soften recoil.

[fusilier]

After some thought, I'm inclined to agree with you on it being perspective rather than spiking it in. Analysing the picture a little, with a couple of assumptions:

. . .

Bombards without a wheeled carriage achieved additional elevation by means of siting it on a hill, planks placed under the front end and liberal amounts of dirt shovelling. Siting a wheeled cannon on a slope or some other precarious base sounds like a excellent way of getting it to disappear down the slope or another accident when fired, so this method was probably very carefully used, if at all.

Also many medieval depictions of cannons seem to have had serious problems with perspective, especially when viewing the cannon from "behind." (although I've seen some that are pretty good).

See this image where the cannon appears to be shooting straight up:

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(If the image doesn't load, see this page: http://www.dkfindout.com/uk/history/...s-and-cannons/ )

It's possible that the end of the carriage's trail was buried, or blocked by a mound of earth, to prevent the cannon from recoiling. If it's a hoop-and-stave cannon (which it appears to be) the pressure would be quite low (relatively) and preventing it from recoiling wouldn't be too injurious. In other gun designs the recoiling of the carriage is intentional, and can only be limited so much without damage to the carriage.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yeah, it appears to be the artists struggling with perspective, rather than a factual illustration.

[Vinyadan]

Yes, I'd say it's a perspective thing. In both images the inclination is right according to perspective, assuming that the eye of the beholder is situated in the middle of the image, but the length of the barrel doesn't change according to it. Scientific perspective was an invention of Brunelleschi, who lived in the XV century. There often is a certain time needed to allow new techniques to bleed out into different areas, as they already have their own stylistic language.

Anyway, these images are very detailed; I personally wasn't expecting it, as they also show precise knowledge of how these things were operated.

[Galloglaich]

Well, a new thread is a pretty good excuse to come back ;)

Also many medieval depictions of cannons seem to have had serious problems with perspective, especially when viewing the cannon from "behind." (although I've seen some that are pretty good).

See this image where the cannon appears to be shooting straight up:

Spoiler

Show

(If the image doesn't load, see this page: http://www.dkfindout.com/uk/history/...s-and-cannons/ )

It's possible that the end of the carriage's trail was buried, or blocked by a mound of earth, to prevent the cannon from recoiling. If it's a hoop-and-stave cannon (which it appears to be) the pressure would be quite low (relatively) and preventing it from recoiling wouldn't be too injurious. In other gun designs the recoiling of the carriage is intentional, and can only be limited so much without damage to the carriage.

I'm going to respectfully take the contrarian view here and say I think sometimes they were aiming them at a very steep near-vertical angle, if not "almost strait up", especially when shooting at walls or towers. That would be my guess for both of those illustration. You see guns being used in all sorts of strange ways in field conditions.


"They" did, I think understand field conditions and hygiene issues, fairly well. As for the civil war, remember the general rule for all things medieval or early modern - don't look at the 19th Century and project backward. You can find many parallels that way, but you need to check them out very carefully.


I think they knew what to do and not to do, (like keeping latrines away from water, burying or burning bodies, eating healthy varieties of food, keeping food preserved and so forth), if by "they" you mean the smartest and most experienced commanders and leaders. There were also simultaneously many leaders every bit as ignorant as those Civil War commanders previously mentioned. But a lot of medieval armies were manned by pro's (even if these were also people who had other day jobs), and pro's wouldn't tolerate the kind of conditions that conscripts would. If they didn't know anything about all this the consequences of keeping armies in the field even for a short time, especially in sieges, would have been even worse than they were (and they were quite bad).

But the problem is there were always many factors that came into this, including the amount of discipline that could be imposed (either from above or fraternally) within the army. I was a medic in charge of these exact issues and I can tell you, it's not easy to tell some hungry people for example that their food is contaminated or tell some tired people they have to dig a new latrine slit trench, and this is in a national army controlled by a very organized State. As time in the field increases, especially during sieges, discipline goes down. Supplies go down, especially supplies of things slightly less critical than horse fodder, ammunition, water and food get used up. So stuff like lime becomes less available. Money to pay troops also almost always runs out which doesn't help discipline either. Time and enemy activity may also constrict opportunities to do what is needed.

Anyway, from the historical accounts, disease can and did spread very quickly during sieges and certain types of warfare. And appeared to be almost inevitable, unless the army could be kept in steady supply (such as by rivers) and was able to make camps that were very organized and more like little towns. Problems with the army also spread as the armies took food and horse fodder from the surrounding areas and simply wrought general destruction. This problem of disease and famine was actually one of the chief reasons for seemingly (to modern minds) confusing cultural limitations on war. Just like a lot of people today can't grasp the reasons for the Geneva Conventions ("why would you limit yourself in any way when conducting war!?" goes the outraged thinking). But for soldiers I think it's more obvious. Anyway in the medieval era there was a specific and very real concern that particular vicious war which included "scorched earth" tactics often led to famine, and famine led to outbreaks of Plague, which could then stick around for years.

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

For example in the aftermath of one war between the Teutonic Knights and Poland, called the "Hunger War", in which each side practiced "Scorched Earth", plague did break out resulting in more casualties for the Teutonic Order than if they had lost a major battle. This later led to more restrictions being placed on war by treaty and tradition, so that mass famine didn't occur again. Not always adhered to perfectly but surprisingly, war was conducted quite a bit in Latin Europe with these restrictions being at least somewhat respected. Of course some others, for example the Mongols, never played by those rules.

The original outbreak of black death, incidentally, started or at least coincided with a massive failed siege by the Mongols of some fortified redoubts held by the Genoese in the Crimea. Plague broke out in the Mongol camp and they catapulted the infected heads of their own dead into the Italian fortifications.




As for the whole knife vs. pistol debate, this is my opinion. First, I think it's foolish to outright dismiss the observations of someone like Mike who is a paramedic and former Marine Corps medic. I was an Army medic for only a little while and I learned a lot from it, especially I learned to respect the experience of guys like Mike who had more time on task than I did and reached higher levels of it. Medical care, especially emergency medicine and first aid, are extremely eye opening experiences that are not well or accurately portrayed in our popular culture and entertainment media for a variety of reasons. It's like being in another world.


That said my own opinion is that the knife issue is somewhat balanced by skill with the knife and how big the knife is. A longer bladed knife that is stiff enough not to break, like a bayonet, is much more deadly. And more intimidating, incidentally.

But other than that my opinion basically is the same as Mike's. Pistols can fail to do much harm too, or jam, but knives from my experience both as a medic and as someone who has been around some street violence, are often not very good at stopping the fight. People often don't even seem to know they were stabbed. So you have a high legal liability to safety ratio - in the sense that the person you want to dissuade may not be dissuaded at all, but you still might get in real bad trouble for wounding or killing them.

In some places people stab a lot, notably certain towns in the more northern parts of the British isles for example, but seem to use them more to wound or disfigure than to kill from the stats I've seen. Maybe cultural adaptation?

But I have seen first-hand a buddy of mine chase a guy 4 blocks before realizing he'd been stabbed bad enough that his lung eventually collapsed. This is one of the reasons for self defense I prefer something like brass knuckles or a collapsible baton, and / or a gun, to a knife. And the knives I like are the big, very stiff and very strong ones that won't break. I have seen a lot of folding knives break and I've seen a lot of people cut themselves real bad with their own knives. Anyway my $0.02 as well, I don't expect it to be taken for gospel.



Finally, as to that old issue from many pages back in the previous thread about the gnomish company of catapult guys. I am going to be contrary yet again and say I don't think that is so unthinkable, in fact I think you did have groups of specialists just like that. It's just that like most people in the medieval world they had day jobs. They had other jobs, in other words. There were some full time condottieri etc. but most medieval mercenaries, even the knightly ones, did other things most of the time. They were craft artisans or merchants, sometimes even priests, or they ran their estates, participated in warlike sports like tournaments and jousts, and engaged in diplomacy and so forth. Medieval people were "Renaissance Men" in the sense that they often were good at a lot of different things. So I think your siege weapon mercs could very well have existed.

An example of travelling gun mercs. There was a Hungarian or German guy called Orban who apparently made some amazing big guns for the Turks. One they used for over 400 years, causing a couple of hundred casualties against the British as late as the 19th Century.

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

[snowblizz]

Finally, as to that old issue from many pages back in the previous thread about the gnomish company of catapult guys. I am going to be contrary yet again and say I don't think that is so unthinkable, in fact I think you did have groups of specialists just like that. It's just that like most people in the medieval world they had day jobs. They had other jobs, in other words. There were some full time condottieri etc. but most medieval mercenaries, even the knightly ones, did other things most of the time. They were craft artisans or merchants, sometimes even priests, or they ran their estates, participated in warlike sports like tournaments and jousts, and engaged in diplomacy and so forth. Medieval people were "Renaissance Men" in the sense that they often were good at a lot of different things. So I think your siege weapon mercs could very well have existed.

An example of travelling gun mercs. There was a Hungarian or German guy called Orban who apparently made some amazing big guns for the Turks. One they used for over 400 years, causing a couple of hundred casualties against the British as late as the 19th Century.

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

Actually what most considered unthinkable was having someone lug around complete machines as a mercenary. I think we all agreed that the knowledge was often "mercenaried". Orban didn't bring his own guns after all, only his own knowledge.

Have you ever ran into an actual mercenary artillery* unit, "guns" and all?

*artillery/guns being used as a very generic terms what with antiquity and renessains eras beign considered

Actually just ran into a fairly interesting illustration from a book on Samurai by Turnbull of a cannon propped up on rice bags or something to elevate it.

[fusilier]

Actually what most considered unthinkable was having someone lug around complete machines as a mercenary. I think we all agreed that the knowledge was often "mercenaried". Orban didn't bring his own guns after all, only his own knowledge.

Have you ever ran into an actual mercenary artillery* unit, "guns" and all?

*artillery/guns being used as a very generic terms what with antiquity and renessains eras beign considered

Actually just ran into a fairly interesting illustration from a book on Samurai by Turnbull of a cannon propped up on rice bags or something to elevate it.

Yeah. I do know of some large condottiere companies that had an artillery component, but I've never encountered an independent mercenary artillery "unit". Typically states owned the cannon but they contracted out their operation.

[fusilier]

I'm going to respectfully take the contrarian view here and say I think sometimes they were aiming them at a very steep near-vertical angle, if not "almost strait up", especially when shooting at walls or towers. That would be my guess for both of those illustration. You see guns being used in all sorts of strange ways in field conditions.

Oh yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if they sometimes fired them at steep angles -- but I doubt they stood them up on their trails, with the wheels hanging in the air.

[Galloglaich]

Oh yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if they sometimes fired them at steep angles -- but I doubt they stood them up on their trails, with the wheels hanging in the air.

Well, who knows. But from accounts they seem to have been used in all kinds of quirky ways, particularly the smaller guns. How guns were used varies of course enormously by the type and region and who owned them. But going back to the subject of cannon and mercenaries, I only have a very limited picture, but the following 15th Century sources give some clues:

Records of the Teutonic and Livonian Knights
Records of military societies like the "Brotherhood of the Blackheads" in Riga and Dorpat etc.
Records of several small Central European towns related to their militia being deployed or hired for wars
Chronicles of the Hanseatic towns (which I know you dispute the validity of)
Records (letters mostly) from Janos Hunyadi and Matthias Corvinus about the Black Army
Letters from George of Podebrady, King and military leader of Bohemia
Letters from Condottieri such as Jan Jiskra
Letters and anecdotes from people like Enea Piccolomini and Jan Dlugosz who were eyewitnesses


So from those sources, in no particular order, I know the following

1) Those really big named 'superguns', the giant bombards like the "Grosse Bosche" etc., were sometimes lent or rented out for battles or confrontations. Presumably they sent experts with them though I don't know many details. There is some stuff in the wiki's for some of them (particularly the non-English language wikis)

2) Smaller towns routinely hired out small militia forces as mercenary companies or committed them as nominal feudal obligations (usually for money, therefore blurring the line between vassal and mercenary) and these forces typically included a small number of men with a large amount of kit, usually including guns and cannon and a lot of ammunition, and other experts like smiths, carpenters, wheelrights, stonemasons and so on who were helpful in sieges and specifically in handling the guns. The one example that comes to mind immediately is the anecdotes from Regensburg of their deployment during the Hussite wars because it has so much detail on the kit and was cited by Hans Delbruck and frequently repeated since (including by me in various incarnations of this thread), but there are dozens of similar accounts in Dlugosz for example.

A lot of times (as in the Regensburg example) these small forces met up with larger, less well equipped armies and acted as their firepower hard core and their support element.

3) Hunyadi, Dlugosz, Jan Jiskra and Piccolomini all mention the use of small, expert mercenary companies of Bohemians, Cossacks or Germans who were mostly again, organized around guns, and specifically gun-wagons, or gun-boats. So forces of say 200 guys with 10 or 15 small guns. There were several of these documented in the region of what was then northern Hungary, now Slovakia.

Incidentally, I think Cortez's original small army of 500 guys, mostly light infantry, in Mexico had about a half dozen small artillery pieces if I remember correctly.

4) The Teutonic and Livonian knights have records of hiring mercenaries and hosting groups of visiting Crusaders who usually came in small but well equipped expert war-bands of either light or heavy cavalry, gunners / archers / crossbowmen, or cannon. Smaller cannon typically on gun-wagons or boats.

5) The Brotherhood of the Blackheads interestingly mention donating some guns and some kind of undefined "stone throwing weapons", maybe catapults, in the 16th Century (which is a little later than you would expect to see such weapons, but maybe not?). They were later used with success in the Livonian Wars against the invading Muscovite armies.

6) I won't get into the Hanseatic sources since you dispute them, but they show a similar pattern.

I'm not sure I could cite these examples, with the exception of the superguns, as purely built around cannon, but a lot of them were heavily oriented toward their cannon and cannon systems (mainly riverboats with guns and / or wagons with guns) at least in that part of Central Europe East of the Elbe.

Another example I just thought of was a small force of Bohemian mercenaries hired by the Poles to fight in the famous battle of Orsha. The battle was mainly a huge cavalry engagement but a small group of Czech gunners, with a combination of handguns and (probably small or medium caliber) cannon are apparently what turned the tide in favor of the Poles, against the Muscovites. You can see the Czechs behind their wagons almost hidden in the upper right corner of the famous (and excellent) painting of the battle:

Spoiler: Battle of Orsha, look in the very upper right corner

Show

Direct link for more detail:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Orsz%C4%85.jpg

So I guess you could argue it many different ways, but it seems to me that in the 15th Century, there were a lot of part time mercenaries and other small groups of fighters (militia, Crusaders, etc.), basically a whole category of them, who were oriented around cannons (and possibly even also mechanical or torsion stone throwers of some kind, based on the example of the Brotherhood of the Blackheads).

It's dangerous to make assumptions of course but there is no reason I can think of to assume that the similar equivalent couldn't have existed with small and medium sized catapults, ballistae and so on in the pre-gunpowder era (mid 13th Century and before) who may have hired themselves out the same way. One thing that is unclear is how such weapons were used, were they only for sieges or were they also used in open field battles the way the Romans apparently used scorpions and so on?

Overall I think there is some room for that gnomish company though.


.

[Vinyadan]

So, I have a question. The man who died on a Tesla some time ago was an ex Navy Seal. How many SEALS are there?

And another question. SEALS are trained very well; this makes them at the same time an investment (which you want to see bring results) and a valuable good (which you don't want to lose too fast). How much are SEALS actually used? Are they constantly deployed? And how good is their chance to end service alive?

[Storm Bringer]

So, I have a question. The man who died on a Tesla some time ago was an ex Navy Seal. 1)How many SEALS are there?

And another question. SEALS are trained very well; this makes them at the same time an investment (which you want to see bring results) and a valuable good (which you don't want to lose too fast). 2.How much are SEALS actually used? 3.Are they constantly deployed? 4.And how good is their chance to end service alive?

1) exact numbers are, of course, classified, but its in the low hundreds range

2) they are used all the time. As you said, they are a considerable investment, so they get utilised as much as
on a regular basis.

3) some part of the SEALS is deployed, somewhere, but I have no idea how often the individual solider is deployed. you need to balance the operational needs for his skills with putting too much pressure on him and "burning him out".

4) to my knowledge, the overwhelming majority of SEAL live though their service and retire into a peaceful civilian life. they just don't make the news.

[snowblizz]

4) to my knowledge, the overwhelming majority of SEAL live though their service and retire into a peaceful civilian life. they just don't make the news.

Indeed. Watch out for the dude who when pressed "was a cook in the Navy, nothing more".

[PersonMan]

Question: in the context of a modern army, what sort of impacts will you see from progressively worsening morale?

Presumably, badly-motivated or even anti-war conscripts would pull down their units, but how strong would this effect likely be?

Additionally, what sort of measures would be taken to try and maintain fighting capability for as many troops as possible even as equipment begins to grow scarce?

[Gnoman]

Question: in the context of a modern army, what sort of impacts will you see from progressively worsening morale?

Presumably, badly-motivated or even anti-war conscripts would pull down their units, but how strong would this effect likely be?

The biggest thing is that important but tedious jobs like patrolling start to not get done, because the low-morale troops don't want to do them and don't have the motivation to do them anyway. Drug use can easily become a problem as well.

Additionally, what sort of measures would be taken to try and maintain fighting capability for as many troops as possible even as equipment begins to grow scarce?

If supplies are scarce, the goal of the soldiers becomes "get more supplies". Troops are very likely going to start making extensive effort to salvage enemy weapons and ammunition from the battlefield or start raiding enemy supply convoys solely to get food. In cases where the army is operating in friendly country, temporarily returning troops to civilian life until supply lines are reestablished can work as well. The early part of the Guadalcanal campaign (in which the Navy withdrew after landing the first wave of Marines, leaving the Marines unsupplied) or guerilla movements such as the PLA or USFIP are good historical models here.

[Mike_G]

Question: in the context of a modern army, what sort of impacts will you see from progressively worsening morale?

Presumably, badly-motivated or even anti-war conscripts would pull down their units, but how strong would this effect likely be?

Additionally, what sort of measures would be taken to try and maintain fighting capability for as many troops as possible even as equipment begins to grow scarce?

The equipment is always scarcer than you want, the food is always worse. Marines (and soldiers, I assume) always bitch and moan.

Morale will be fine as long as the troops feel they can trust one another. I may be cold, wet, tired, hungry and pissed off at everyone from my fire team leader through the Commandant of the Corps to the President and every idiot sitting safe at home who voted for the President. But if I know that the Marines in my squad will have my back, I can function as part of that unit.

Once a soldier doesn't trust the rest of the unit, he stops taking chances, starts looking out for numero uno and the mission becomes "minimize my own personal risk." Whish means that patrols get half-assed, since aggressive patrolling is dangerous to the individual even though it makes the unit safer. Maybe I don't go look very hard for mines and snipers (again, because those things can kill you) and I just say I did and it looks clear. Or I hide in the bottom of my hole instead of shooting back, because putting my head above the lip of the hole is dangerous.

Lots of things that are important for the safety and success of the whole are the exact opposite of things that are safe for the individual.

This goes back as far as war. The first pikeman who runs away has the best chance to survive if the unit breaks, but the unit has the best chance to not break if nobody runs. And if nobody runs, more of them will survive overall.

Morale is high when I care more about my unit than myself. Once I start thinking "screw those guys, I'm going to worry about me" my personal morale is broken, and I am no longer an asset, but a liability. Everyone has a breaking point, and combat is stressful. Once enough of the troops have passed their breaking point, the unit is effectively useless.

The best way for authority to boost morale is to have officers and NCOs share the hardships with the men and demonstrate concern and willingness to expose themselves to as much danger as they ask the men to. Men will carry on if they think everyone else is going to. Nobody wants to be the first to break, and the example starts with the leaders. They set the tone.

The other thing a military can do is rotate troops out and let them rest and refit. Troops effectiveness will deteriorate over time in active campaigning. You can preserve it longer by rotating troops out and letting fresh troops take the heat for a while.

Little things like better rations, new equipment, clean socks (clean socks are like a +10 Morale bonus to everything) help. The men think the command cares about them, so they are more reluctant to let the unit down. How likely the wounded are to get treatment has an effect as well. If I'm pretty sure my buddies will pull me out and get me to medical care, I'm more likely to risk myself. If the wounded are left on the field to suffer and die, I'm going to make sure I'm not the guy who gets wounded.

Most armies are defeated by broken morale. You don't generally have to kill all of them , just make enough of them give up and start looking out for number one.

[Vinyadan]

A practical example is the fall of Mosul in 2014. Absolute lack of identity in the army, fragmentation, the idea in some groups that serving the government wasn't in their best interest, together with possibly a number of problems which generally plague Arab armies ( http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars ), the fact that the State they were serving looked more like an assumption than reality and assorted fears and distrust made it so that 30.000 men were defeated by 2.000, with some joining the opposing side and others changing clothes, abandoning weapons and posts and hiding among the civilians. (This is why ISIS is currently under control of American-made 155mm M198 howitzers).

This could also be observed during the American invasion of 2003, when some Iraqi soldiers even tried to surrender to a journalist troupe. However, some elite units with esprit de corps did put up resistance, with the best example to my knowledge being the Republican Guard Medina Division, which scored the only Iraqi victory in the war during the attack on Karbala. The attack actually had the purpose of hitting the morale of the Iraqi army through the destruction of what was perceived to be its best division. The same unit quietly disbanded during battle ten days later, however.

Anyway, the point is that widespread low morale can bring to unexpected collapse, on levels which are unimaginable for armed forces in a "standard" situation.

[fusilier]

Question: in the context of a modern army, what sort of impacts will you see from progressively worsening morale?

Presumably, badly-motivated or even anti-war conscripts would pull down their units, but how strong would this effect likely be?

Additionally, what sort of measures would be taken to try and maintain fighting capability for as many troops as possible even as equipment begins to grow scarce?

You might want to look at examples from WW1 (if that's modern enough). Poor morale and distrust of leadership led to large scale mutinies occurred which are quite different in condition and effect from what Mike_G describes.

[BayardSPSR]

Once a soldier doesn't trust the rest of the unit, he stops taking chances, starts looking out for numero uno and the mission becomes "minimize my own personal risk." Whish means that patrols get half-assed, since aggressive patrolling is dangerous to the individual even though it makes the unit safer. Maybe I don't go look very hard for mines and snipers (again, because those things can kill you) and I just say I did and it looks clear. Or I hide in the bottom of my hole instead of shooting back, because putting my head above the lip of the hole is dangerous.

Another good - in fact, exact - example would be the behavior of many Argentinean conscripts during the Falklands War.

On the topic of Arab militaries, Kenneth Pollack's doctoral thesis will answer any questions you have more thoroughly than everything else I've seen; many of the popular conceptions are oversimplifications or wrong (like the emphasis on the relationship with the USSR as a source of bad practices). It's less than 800 pages long, too, so it's worth a look if you're interested. He also wrote a book based on it, but the book's a bit watered down and doesn't examine all the possible alternative hypotheses quite as convincingly.

The reason I bring it up is because of something common between the Argentinean experience and most of the Arab catastrophes: abusively bad relations between the officer corps and the conscripts. When Arab units have collapsed under pressure, it has often (if not usually) been the officers that disappeared first.

[cobaltstarfire]

So while I was making a grueling drive across the country, I got to wondering about how roads were built and maintained in the far past, and how thry may have differed between regions/cultures, as well as how this would effect troop movement.

I imagine a lot of roads start out as well worn paths that many people travel, did many of them remain just dirt pathways, or was there more to it than that?

I also had another question for the indeterminate sized heron riders, we talked about bows/xbows/and javelins, along with dropping heavy/pointy/burny things, but what about things like slings or sling shots?

Would a stone from such a weapon care as much about wind as a bolt or arrow?

I'm restricted to an ipod right now ao I appologize if anything is a little extra squirrelly, writing in this thing is a pain...

[Knaight]

It depends on the stone. When it comes to sling ammunition, you can think of there as being a few distinct common materials, and a few distinct common shapes, plus various edge cases. Materials-wise, you generally got either clay, stone, or lead. Stone is a pretty large category, but looking at all the materials you can effectively think of denser materials as being less affected by wind and air resistance overall. With regards to shape, you usually had spherical, oblong, or football shaped projectiles, with football shaped projectiles designed to be more aerodynamic. In the context of stones picked up off the ground it was about finding approximately spherical or oblong stones that were good enough. Then there's size, where bigger projectiles are generally less effected by wind than smaller ones of the same shape and density, mostly because of the matter of how mass scales compared to cross sectional area.

Speaking really generally, I'd say that glandes are generally less susceptable to wind and air resistance, particularly in the context of falling speed.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

So while I was making a grueling drive across the country, I got to wondering about how roads were built and maintained in the far past, and how thry may have differed between regions/cultures, as well as how this would effect troop movement.

I imagine a lot of roads start out as well worn paths that many people travel, did many of them remain just dirt pathways, or was there more to it than that?

It would likely depend on where the road is and what it's used for - main roads near to a major trade settlement would be well maintained and made of stone, in order to facilitate the movement of goods and people in and out, while a small hamlet might have a rutted track that turns into mud for 8 months of the year, a well worn path to the nearest place of worship, and everyone who lives there normally uses their own knowledge of the local woods to get to anywhere else outside the hamlet they need to be.