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

[Brother Oni]

Real World Weapon, Armour and Tactics Thread XXII

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

A few rules for this thread:

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

With that done, have at and enjoy yourselves!

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Thread XXI

[Brother Oni]

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

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

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

[Storm_Of_Snow]

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

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

[gkathellar]

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

[Mike_G]

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

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

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

[Max_Killjoy]

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

[Brother Oni]

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

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

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

[Galloglaich]

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

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

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

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

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

G

[Max_Killjoy]

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

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

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

G

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

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

[Mike_G]

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

Spot the Marine from Boston.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pseudo EDIT:

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



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

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

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

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

Well, it's a bad idea.

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

[Galloglaich]

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

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

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

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

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

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

G

[Max_Killjoy]

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

Spot the Marine from Boston.



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




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

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



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

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

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

Well, it's a bad idea.

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

Well said.

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


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

[gkathellar]

Well said.

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

Hear hear!

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

[Carl]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thats all stuff the army can air drop in.

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

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

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

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

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

Also, is a new discussion needed?

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

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


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

[Carl]

@Mike_G:

I wouldn't say completely reorganise the entire army.

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

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

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

[Mike_G]

MEU

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

Then go here

Then we can talk.

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

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

[snowblizz]

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

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

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

[Max_Killjoy]

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

[Mike_G]

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

Exactly.

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

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

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

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

[Vinyadan]

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

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

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

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

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

[Storm_Of_Snow]

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

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

[Garimeth]

Exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[MrZJunior]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Garimeth]

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

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

[MrZJunior]

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

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

[Carl]

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

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

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

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

[Lemmy]

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

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

[Garimeth]

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

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

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

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

These things are still largely true in antiquity.

[MrZJunior]

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

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

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

[Mr Beer]

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

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

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

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

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

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