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

[Kiero]

We definitely have historical evidence for widespread knowledge of swimming in ancient Greece, where people incapable of even the most ordinary accomplishments were called "people who can't spell nor swim" (it's worth saying that literacy was widespread in Athens). There also was a yearly organised swimming competition in the Peloponnese, in the city of Hermione, part of games held in honour of Dionysus. It's also clear that, in Rome, it was common for bathers to challenge each other at impromptu swim races. If you can read Italian, there is an article available for free: https://www.persee.fr/doc/mefr_0223-...num_111_1_2073

Also noteworthy that the professional Roman legionaries, from Marius onwards, were taught to swim as part of their training.

[Pauly]

The cultures that have traditions of swimming (Polynesian, Athenian for example) are both:
- warm climate; and
- sheltered water (Mediterranean Sea, Pacific atoll lagoons)

When you move into areas with cold climates and open seas the rates of swimming go down.

Also for the purpose of this discussion it should also be noted that the recruitment pools for sailors and marines are different. There has been a lot of discussion about RN pressgangs, however the Royal Marines were strictly volunteer.

Sailors historically were recruited from coastal areas. Men who had experience of the sea were the most desirable. Marines were often recruited from the general population, since their role was fighting, not sailing.

[rrgg]

On the subject of impressment. Curiously enough, Machiavelli was a very strong proponent of conscription due to perhaps a little bit of classism and belief that different people have innate dispositions. Basically his argument was that the only people who would willingly volunteer to join the army were usually just the desperate, loiterers, thieves, basically the very bottom dregs of society, whereas with conscription you would at least be more likely to get soldiers who were honorable, trustworthy, had useful skills, or at the very least were more invested in society and felt they had something worth defending.

Right or wrong Machiavelli's "Art of War" did end up being very widely circulated and may have influenced many countries' use of conscription during the early modern period.

I suppose particularly for navies, individuals who were already skilled sailors would have probably have had no trouble getting work on commercial ships instead. So if the navy had a shortage of skilled individuals, the option would have been to either press gang existing sailors, or else find volunteers that would likely need to be trained from scratch.

[hymer]

On the use of attack helicopters in modern warfare:

I'm given to understand that AHs serve primarily as anti-tank weapons, and as a more mobile substitute for ground-based artillery. Please correct and/or add if needs be. My question is, what is the AH capability that fixed-wing aircraft can't match on the battlefield? Why are they deployed? It seems to me that the faster aircraft would have better response times as artillery, and they would be much less vulnerable to enemy air power and anti-air capabilities. Indeed (and again, please correct me if I'm wrong), you don't really want to deploy AHs in an area where you don't have air superiority.

Please enlighten me.

[Kiero]

On the subject of impressment. Curiously enough, Machiavelli was a very strong proponent of conscription due to perhaps a little bit of classism and belief that different people have innate dispositions. Basically his argument was that the only people who would willingly volunteer to join the army were usually just the desperate, loiterers, thieves, basically the very bottom dregs of society, whereas with conscription you would at least be more likely to get soldiers who were honorable, trustworthy, had useful skills, or at the very least were more invested in society and felt they had something worth defending.

Right or wrong Machiavelli's "Art of War" did end up being very widely circulated and may have influenced many countries' use of conscription during the early modern period.

I suppose particularly for navies, individuals who were already skilled sailors would have probably have had no trouble getting work on commercial ships instead. So if the navy had a shortage of skilled individuals, the option would have been to either press gang existing sailors, or else find volunteers that would likely need to be trained from scratch.

I suspect much of Machiavelli's suspicion of professionals was due to his experience with mercenaries - in The Prince he seems to see little meaningful difference between mercenaries and volunteers.

[Pauly]

Attack Helicopters have the following advantages
1) they can linger on the battlefield for extended periods.
2) they can hide behind terrain and only need to become visible for short periods to launch payloads. I believe I am correct in assuming that nowadays targets can be marked by friendly infantry and the attack can be delivered without needing to expose themselves to the enemy
3) they are easier to co-ordinate with other ground forces due to operating at relatively similar speeds.
4) they are (usually) under the control of the Army, not the Airforce. Which means they operate when and where the Army want them to be.
5) they are cheaper than jets to buy and operate.

Attack Helicopters have, more or less, replaced the Tank Destroyer.

[Kiero]

Attack Helicopters have the following advantages
1) they can linger on the battlefield for extended periods.
2) they can hide behind terrain and only need to become visible for short periods to launch payloads. I believe I am correct in assuming that nowadays targets can be marked by friendly infantry and the attack can be delivered without needing to expose themselves to the enemy
3) they are easier to co-ordinate with other ground forces due to operating at relatively similar speeds.
4) they are (usually) under the control of the Army, not the Airforce. Which means they operate when and where the Army want them to be.
5) they are cheaper than jets to buy and operate.

Attack Helicopters have, more or less, replaced the Tank Destroyer.

However, the equivalence to fixed-wing aircraft is possibly a false one. For a brief time, before the second Iraq War, there was a notion in defence circles that the attack helicopter had replaced the battle tank. After all it could bring a lot of hurt down, but with added mobility. That was disproved by the experience of the insurgency that followed the collapse of the Iraqi regime, where the durability of the tank mattered more in urban environments. Particularly the way a couple of RPGs could down a helicopter, but a tank could wade through tens of them (providing mobile cover for infantry all the while) and function just fine.

[hymer]

@ Pauly: Thanks for the thoughts!
1: Do you have any numbers we can compare? I’d expect that dedicated close air support craft all have pretty decent loitering times (I think that’s the expression).
2: Definite advantage. Comparable in defensive terms to the agility of fixed-wing craft? How often do the two types of craft get shot down in comparable missions? When would you send the AH over the fixed-wing craft?
3 & 4: Makes sense. It would seem you could compensate for that operationally, say, by giving the army CAS jets in addition to AHs, and developing the doctrines accordingly.
5: Cheaper to operate, I’m sure you’re right there. Jets must use more fuel to get that higher speed. But they may be cheaper to build. A quick search shows that the apache helicopter is over 35m USD, and the Warthog is less than 20m.

@ Kiero: I don’t follow. It seems you say that AHs can’t be compared to fixed-wing aircraft, but then go on to show that they should operate in similar roles, because AHs are quite vulnerable to enemy ground fire?
At any rate, the question I’m hoping to answer is what is it that AHs do better than fixed-wing aircraft? Apparently acting as armoured vehicles isn’t it, no real surprise.

Edit: Having searched on warthogs and apaches, I've found what seems to be part of an answer, by someone who uses very specific terms - so they might actually know what they're talking about. The 3&4 Pauly mentions are also mentioned, pointing to the fixed wing aircraft usually needing to be called in by the ground commander to hit a specific target. When doing this sort of mission, the aircraft is only supposed to attack when given orders to do so (Close Air Support). The apache crew are more free to act and react on their own initiative (doing what's called Close Combat Attack), like frontline ground-based units.
It seems the apache helicopter has some additional capabilities (not specified, but I'm guessing things like thermal imaging), which is what allows the crew the situational awareness required to do those close combat attacks. So in the cases of those specific two aircraft, this seems to be a thing the AH can do that the fixed-wing aircraft can not (or at least does not) do.

[gkathellar]

At any rate, the question I’m hoping to answer is what is it that AHs do better than fixed-wing aircraft? Apparently acting as armoured vehicles isn’t it, no real surprise.

They're slower but far more maneuverable, and they can hover. An attack helicopter can move between and around buildings, sit in a single spot and make use of continuous directed fire, and can take cover and move 3-dimensionally at will. They also don't need a runway to land or takeoff, so that can be useful.

Planes are great, but the need for continuous momentum gives them limitations. A bird comparison may be in order: a peregrine falcon is phenomenally fast and deft on the wing, but it ain't pulling no hummingbird stunts (and vice versa).

[Pauly]

@Hymer

The A-10 probably should be put to one side. The simplified version of its development is that the airforce designed an attack helicopter replacement so those army boys would stop filling up otheir nice air space with helicopters. The Air Force has been trying to decommission them ever since the Berlin wall came down but the Army like them too much.

When you look at what the AF wants to use, a supersonic jet, you’re talking about 5 to 10 seconds maximum in the battlespace. With no guarantee that there will be more strikes to come, with the AF managing and prioritizing when and where the strikes will come. This minimizes the risk to the airframe and theoretically putting the payloads on the most deserving targets. The Army prefers an asset that will loiter in a given battle space and co-ordinate with other elements.

Generally speaking fixed wings are more vulnerable to SAMs and helos are more vulnerable to direct fire. Fixed wings (assuming supersonic capable jets) are more vulnerable to enemy aircraft, helos are more vulnerable to AFVs and other helos. So which is more vulnerable in a situation will depend on terrain and the enemy assets.

For cost I was assuming an AH-64, AH-1Z or Ka-50 equivalent against an F-35 which is the current meta.

[Willie the Duck]

For many topics in antiquity, we have little better. Even archaeology is fragmentary, never mind documented evidence. If some Egyptian, Persian or Babylonian bureaucrat didn't write about it in one of the caches that survived, the historical record is silent.

Very true, and all our challenges in discussing how people fought with weapons that didn't show up in the (mostly) late-medieval and later (mostly) fencing treatises just exemplifies how much knowledge of rudimentary aspects of life can be missing from the written record. However, whether people regularly swam seems like the kind of thing that would show up in writing, and if not that, in things like whether ancient docks had direct foot-access to the water, and so forth. Regardless, and I don't want to accidentally insult anyone specific here, I've had bad luck with a bunch of forum dwellers going, 'well, it stands to reason that...', so I instinctively put some breaks on things where we get too far along an idea with no sources or references. I'll definitely try to muddle through Vinyadan's link, although my Italian is over 25 years old and wasn't that good to start with.

Not true of the Phoenicians, who were famous for being able to navigate by the stars, and engage in blue water sailing at will. That knowledge eventually passed into commonality, having been a jealously-guarded secret.

Yes, I didn't want to muddy the water with exceptions (although muddy water would by definition be shallow...), but was aware of that case. Eventually we have to put some guard rails around what question we actually are asking. Obviously we are going to find antiquity cultures which probably did, and didn't, sail out of shore sight, and ones that did and didn't routinely swim. Hopefully we even know which are which.

[gkathellar]

Yes, I didn't want to muddy the water with exceptions (although muddy water would by definition be shallow...), but was aware of that case. Eventually we have to put some guard rails around what question we actually are asking. Obviously we are going to find antiquity cultures which probably did, and didn't, sail out of shore sight, and ones that did and didn't routinely swim. Hopefully we even know which are which.

I think the point is that statements such as, "people didn't swim very much until the 19th-20th century," or, "navigators hugged the shoreline throughout antiquity," are clearly contradicted by the various Mediterranean and South Pacific cultures that swam extensively and performed terrific feats of navigation on the open sea (Polynesian wayfinding was known to account for the sun, the stars, units of nautical time, water temperature, and known swell pattern).

Were these cultures the norm, worldwide? Probably not. But they are relevant to the matter at hand, if only to help us understand why non-swimming cultures lived the way they did (environmental differences are a very likely candidate).

[The Jack]

Allowing for overblown characters, name changes and wuxia like-tropes, How historically accurate is the Manga Kingdom. Are there detailed records of these battles/strategic thought/political moves?

[Brother Oni]

The A-10 probably should be put to one side.

The AC-130 and its variants should also be similarly put aside.

Allowing for overblown characters, name changes and wuxia like-tropes, How historically accurate is the Manga Kingdom. Are there detailed records of these battles/strategic thought/political moves?

Kingdom is about as historically accurate to the Warring States period as the video game Dynasty Warriors is to the Three Kingdoms. Even the Romance Of the Three Kingdoms novel is comparatively more accurate to its time period.

While the general events are broadly correctly, motivations and personalities are often 'in name only' and sometimes not even that due to the translation choices/errors (you're going from Chinese to Japanese to English).

The main historical work I know of regarding the Warring States is the Zhan Guo Ce (戰國策) or Strategies of the Warring States, which is a ~3rd Century BC era historical novel. The novel covers from the 5th Century BC to the attempted assassination of King Qin Shi Huang (later Emperor) in 221 BC.

Note that this is the second recorded assassination attempt, performed by Gao Jianli. The first attempt by Jing Ke happened in 227 BC and that attempt has been adapted with a variety of accuracy into books, films, TV series, anime, etc, most famously the film Hero with Jet Li.
Jing Ke's attempt has also been recorded separately in a chapter of the Biographies of Assassins in the Shiji (史記 or Records of the Grand Historian), completed in the 1st Century BC.

Edit: I realise I'm probably being a bit too harsh. While Kingdom is a perfectly accessible introduction to the Warring States (I quite enjoy it), it should be remembered that it has a Japanese shonen/seinen manga approach towards the subject material, complete with the conventions thereof. If you want a historically accurate version of the Warring States, I'd read Strategies.

[Storm Bringer]

@ Pauly: Thanks for the thoughts!
1: Do you have any numbers we can compare? I’d expect that dedicated close air support craft all have pretty decent loitering times (I think that’s the expression).
2: Definite advantage. Comparable in defensive terms to the agility of fixed-wing craft? How often do the two types of craft get shot down in comparable missions? When would you send the AH over the fixed-wing craft?
3 & 4: Makes sense. It would seem you could compensate for that operationally, say, by giving the army CAS jets in addition to AHs, and developing the doctrines accordingly.
5: Cheaper to operate, I’m sure you’re right there. Jets must use more fuel to get that higher speed. But they may be cheaper to build. A quick search shows that the apache helicopter is over 35m USD, and the Warthog is less than 20m.

@ Kiero: I don’t follow. It seems you say that AHs can’t be compared to fixed-wing aircraft, but then go on to show that they should operate in similar roles, because AHs are quite vulnerable to enemy ground fire?
At any rate, the question I’m hoping to answer is what is it that AHs do better than fixed-wing aircraft? Apparently acting as armoured vehicles isn’t it, no real surprise.

Edit: Having searched on warthogs and apaches, I've found what seems to be part of an answer, by someone who uses very specific terms - so they might actually know what they're talking about. The 3&4 Pauly mentions are also mentioned, pointing to the fixed wing aircraft usually needing to be called in by the ground commander to hit a specific target. When doing this sort of mission, the aircraft is only supposed to attack when given orders to do so (Close Air Support). The apache crew are more free to act and react on their own initiative (doing what's called Close Combat Attack), like frontline ground-based units.
It seems the apache helicopter has some additional capabilities (not specified, but I'm guessing things like thermal imaging), which is what allows the crew the situational awareness required to do those close combat attacks. So in the cases of those specific two aircraft, this seems to be a thing the AH can do that the fixed-wing aircraft can not (or at least does not) do.

1) the key point is while a CAS plane might be able to fly for 10 hours, its tied to big, fixed airbases, often some way from the combat zone (for example, the RAF planes flying strike missions over Syria are based on Cyprus). if it takes 3 hours to fly to the combat zone, then 3 to fly back, that 10 hour flight is only 4 hours "on station". A helicopter can be based much closer to the front and can thus spend longer on station, all else being equal. Also, as transit time is shorter, this means that they can maintain a higher sortie rate (number of flights) than a CAS planes based further out. this means that one chopper airframe might be able to deliver two or even three strike missions in support of a ground unit in the time it take a CAS to fly one mission.


2) basically, a chopper is vulnerable to different threats, but it can often operate in a environment that fixed wings simply cant (for example, one with a high number of SAM systems).

3 & 4). while it sounds like a great idea, the big problem is inter-service rivalries. Basically, Air forces (as a general rule) want to control everything that flies (because its the air force). they can tolerate armies having helicopters, but full sized planes is too much. Also, it comes to budget, in that the air force doesn't want to pay for CAS (it would much rather pay for fighters, as it sees its job as air warfare), but the army is willing to pay for CAS out its own budget. army dollars, army project.

Also, as Pauly mentions the Army wants a support asset that it can control, and send where it wants, not where the air force thinks it should go. the army can attach a AH squadron to a battlegroup, and that battlegroup can then rely on having that chopper support for as long as the army commander wants it their, mission after mission, day in, day out, whereas a CAS plane will fly in, level a grid square, and not be seen again.

5) when you see per-unit prices, you need to check the years of those prices. A A10 cost $20m in when? 1975? 2000? 2018? Inflation means that depending on when the two prices are form, it could be the 20 million A 10 costs more than the 35 million apache, once you adjust for inflation.


on your edit, the key point about the greater situational awareness is that a helicopter can loiter, or even hover if it wants, and can do so form very low altitude, thus it can get a much better idea about whats going on than a airplane sat at tens of thousands of feet at hundreds of miles an hour. the best analogy I can think of is the difference between what you can see if you cycle down a side street, compared to watching the same street as you speed past on a motorway. it can see more, and better, than a plane, so its trusted to make its own calls about what to destroy.


A side advantage of this lower viewpoint is that its much easier for a forward air controller to talk a helicopter onto a target because the chopper has a somewhat similar view of the target, compared to a pilot at high altitude trying to work out which of the 15 small identical looking brown compounds is the one the FAC wants you to bomb.

[Max_Killjoy]

1) the key point is while a CAS plane might be able to fly for 10 hours, its tied to big, fixed airbases, often some way from the combat zone (for example, the RAF planes flying strike missions over Syria are based on Cyprus). if it takes 3 hours to fly to the combat zone, then 3 to fly back, that 10 hour flight is only 4 hours "on station". A helicopter can be based much closer to the front and can thus spend longer on station, all else being equal. Also, as transit time is shorter, this means that they can maintain a higher sortie rate (number of flights) than a CAS planes based further out. this means that one chopper airframe might be able to deliver two or even three strike missions in support of a ground unit in the time it take a CAS to fly one mission.

One of the reasons the A-10 needs to be set aside in breaking down the differences -- it's deliberately not tied to big airbases, and was designed to operate from austere FOBs much closer to the front lines, only having to return to the big bases for major maintenance. Not as close to the action as the helicopters are typically based, but it makes up for that by having a higher cruise speed for ingress and egress, and much longer "legs" than most helicopters. Given the massive endurance of the A-10 compared to fast-movers, it's also capable of being "on call" just behind the front lines, ready to answer a call from just a few minutes away, for a long time -- you'd never do that with an F-16 or F-35.

And unlike the fast-movers, it will also "hang around" and keep fighting a lot longer. One Iraqi officer, after the first Gulf War, reported that the first time A-10s showed up, they made their first attack run, and some of the Iraqi troops thought it was safe to come out, because the enemy planes had made their attack and just hit a couple of trucks.. and then the A-10s made another pass... and another pass... and another pass...

[Mike_G]

Speaking of CAS, that's one big advantage the Marine Corps has in that they have their own fixed wing aircraft, and their doctrine emphasizes CAS.

They still use a lot of helicopters, though, because, as others have already pointed out, different tools for different jobs.

But having the CAS fighters under your command is nice when you want the priority to be CAS, not dogfighting or strategic bombing.

[Brother Oni]

A side advantage of this lower viewpoint is that its much easier for a forward air controller to talk a helicopter onto a target because the chopper has a somewhat similar view of the target, compared to a pilot at high altitude trying to work out which of the 15 small identical looking brown compounds is the one the FAC wants you to bomb.

As an example of what it looks like from an A-10's pilot's viewpoint during a FAC/JTAC call: link.

[Max_Killjoy]

As an example of what it looks like from an A-10's pilot's viewpoint during a FAC/JTAC call: link.

Nothing else brings that gun, no chopper, no jet.

What really struck me was how close to the ground the pilots are willing to get to make sure they're getting the fire in the right spot -- how many times did the altitude alert go off while they were firing?

[Max_Killjoy]

Appropriate for this thread:

https://xkcd.com/2086/

Spoiler: Alt Text

Show

When we take into account the recent discovery of previously-unstudied history in the 1750s, this year may have been an outright loss.

[Pauly]

I think the point is that statements such as, "people didn't swim very much until the 19th-20th century," or, "navigators hugged the shoreline throughout antiquity," are clearly contradicted by the various Mediterranean and South Pacific cultures that swam extensively and performed terrific feats of navigation on the open sea (Polynesian wayfinding was known to account for the sun, the stars, units of nautical time, water temperature, and known swell pattern).

Were these cultures the norm, worldwide? Probably not. But they are relevant to the matter at hand, if only to help us understand why non-swimming cultures lived the way they did (environmental differences are a very likely candidate).

The fact that cultures that developed beyond the horizon sailing can be named individually (Polynesian, Viking, Phonecian) tells you that in antiquity it was a rare skill. And I don’t know if I’d even include the Phonecians in that list because the Med isn’t that big.
The fact that it was considered noteworthy that most Athenians knew how to swim, or that all legionnaires were taught to swim tells you that it was an uncommon skill.
Logically if these skills were common it wouldn’t be considered noteworthy, it would be lacking the skill that becomes noteworthy.

It’s where the saying “the exception proves the rule comes from”. If it’s said (for example) “All classical-era maritime nations except the Phonecians hugged the coast” by pointing out that the Phonecians were the only ones that didn’t strengthens the case that all others did.

[The Jack]

I dunno, I've lived my life in coastal places where not being able to swim is weird. Nobody mentions it. It's not something you talk about or write about (except when the countries you've been to get more than the usual medals for this sorta thing)

There are also a lot less arachnophobes in countries with lots of spiders. It's the arachnophobes that make a big deal out of it, not the regulars. When things are second nature, they just don't talk about it. I kinda assume non-swimmers are sheltered children, weirdos or Inlanders of excessive degree, or some combination of such. (Related: I feel flatlands are very distasteful, and that living in the hills must somehow be good for you.)

Living on the coast and not being able to swim seems mad. Historic peoples, after agriculture, needed things to do. Basic swimming skills are unlocked as soon as you get beyond panicking at being in water.

As north as it is, The Baltic is very nice during summer.
Modern brits are good swimmers even though it's obviously a terrible place to swim. They try to go to the beach during summer, where it's still terribly cold.
Modern Australians are also marvelous swimmers even though they have more riptides than reasonable.
-What the hell did ancient peoples do during floods if they couldn't swim? They can't all be on hills all the time.

[Pauly]

I dunno, I've lived my life in coastal places where not being able to swim is weird. Nobody mentions it. It's not something you talk about or write about (except when the countries you've been to get more than the usual medals for this sorta thing)

There are also a lot less arachnophobes in countries with lots of spiders. It's the arachnophobes that make a big deal out of it, not the regulars. When things are second nature, they just don't talk about it. I kinda assume non-swimmers are sheltered children, weirdos or Inlanders of excessive degree, or some combination of such. (Related: I feel flatlands are very distasteful, and that living in the hills must somehow be good for you.)

Living on the coast and not being able to swim seems mad. Historic peoples, after agriculture, needed things to do. Basic swimming skills are unlocked as soon as you get beyond panicking at being in water.

As north as it is, The Baltic is very nice during summer.
Modern brits are good swimmers even though it's obviously a terrible place to swim. They try to go to the beach during summer, where it's still terribly cold.
Modern Australians are also marvelous swimmers even though they have more riptides than reasonable.
-What the hell did ancient peoples do during floods if they couldn't swim? They can't all be on hills all the time.

Swimming was a uncommon skill, but not a rare skill like say sailing beyond the sight of land or patterrn welding steel.

What was rare was for swimming to be a common skill in a given group. It would be assumed a large segment of a coastal community could swim, it was worthy of comment that all or nearly all Athenians could swim. The same way that being a warrior wasn’t rare, but it was worthy of comment that all or nearly all Spartans were trained warriors.

[rrgg]

I think someone mentioned this earlier but Vegetius claimed that roman soldiers were taught how to swim. Vegetius' works were very widely read and very influential throughout the middle ages, so i think most medieval military thinkers likewise tended to agree that swimming was a very useful skill for soldiers or knights to learn.

I do suspect that recreational swimming was a thing during the middle ages, medieval europeans were certainly no strangers to dangerous past times after all, although it perhaps wasn't as widely encouraged as it is today. Getting back to Pietro Monte, he did mention that recruits who grew up near bodies of water usually already knew how to swim, however he also complained that many fathers would intentionally not teach their sons how to swim because they thought it was very dangerous.

[Protato]

I have some questions about vehicles. Would a modernized MiG21 be able to compete with the likes of a MiG29 or even a F22/F35? For that matter, would the Mig21 chaff be able to block modern air-to-air or SAM missiles? Additionally, would the T72M still be viable as an MBT, and would the M113 as a platform be an effective basis for artillery/APC/antiair battery use? Finally, is the Mi17M a good helicopter, able to compete well enough with Hinds, Havocs, and the like?

[Kiero]

The fact that cultures that developed beyond the horizon sailing can be named individually (Polynesian, Viking, Phonecian) tells you that in antiquity it was a rare skill. And I don’t know if I’d even include the Phonecians in that list because the Med isn’t that big.
The fact that it was considered noteworthy that most Athenians knew how to swim, or that all legionnaires were taught to swim tells you that it was an uncommon skill.
Logically if these skills were common it wouldn’t be considered noteworthy, it would be lacking the skill that becomes noteworthy.

It’s where the saying “the exception proves the rule comes from”. If it’s said (for example) “All classical-era maritime nations except the Phonecians hugged the coast” by pointing out that the Phonecians were the only ones that didn’t strengthens the case that all others did.

At the time of the Greco-Persian Wars, the Phoenicians still had a monopoly on their knowledge of stellar navigation. By the Hellenistic and Roman era, it was no longer a secret and many others likely did. That didn't mean even captains who knew how would take the risk, though.

[Pauly]

I have some questions about vehicles. Would a modernized MiG21 be able to compete with the likes of a MiG29 or even a F22/F35? For that matter, would the Mig21 chaff be able to block modern air-to-air or SAM missiles? Additionally, would the T72M still be viable as an MBT, and would the M113 as a platform be an effective basis for artillery/APC/antiair battery use? Finally, is the Mi17M a good helicopter, able to compete well enough with Hinds, Havocs, and the like?

Short answer
Mig 21 no
T-72 no
M113. No, yes, yes.
M17 is a general purpose helicopter, similar to a Blackhawk. It can fill the gunship role, but not as effectively as a purpose designed attack helicopter.

Longer answer on the Mig 21. The performance and radar signals are much worse than modern designs. With a full radar and avionics upgrade and state of the art AAMs it could conceivably pose a danger to say an F-35 but even then I would expect a kill ratio of 10-1 or worse against equally skilled opponents. The modern jets would be able to see you before you saw them, and in aerial warfare that’s what determines who lives or dies.

Longer answer on the T-72. Advances in armor technology and gun technology leave it well behind. If handled tactically astutely and theybwere able ambush modern MBTs they could do some damage. Without surprise and/or tactical advantage the modern MBTs penetrate them at ranges where they can’t penetrate back.

The Mi113 is a very light chassis, it wouldn’t be able to take the recoil of 105mm+ artillery. It can be used as a mortar carrier, it can carry lighter 75mm guns, it can carry recoilless rifles, it can carry missile systems. As for it’s effectiveness as an APC, VietNam veterans I’ve spoken to said it’s armor only slowed a bullet down enough so it could ricochet around the inside.

[Pauly]

At the time of the Greco-Persian Wars, the Phoenicians still had a monopoly on their knowledge of stellar navigation. By the Hellenistic and Roman era, it was no longer a secret and many others likely did. That didn't mean even captains who knew how would take the risk, though.

Even s during the Carthaginian wars the transit from Carthage (approximately modern day Tunis) to Sicily was considered so risky as to be an unviable military risk. Leading to all the fighting in Spain and North Africa. Crossing the Alps was less risky.

[Kiero]

Even s during the Carthaginian wars the transit from Carthage (approximately modern day Tunis) to Sicily was considered so risky as to be an unviable military risk. Leading to all the fighting in Spain and North Africa. Crossing the Alps was less risky.

That didn't seem to stop Agathokles (the Syracusan tyrant) shuttling back and forth at will during his conflicts with Carthage.

[Pauly]

That didn't seem to stop Agathokles (the Syracusan tyrant) shuttling back and forth at will during his conflicts with Carthage.

I don’t know much about his campaigns. I know him mainly through Machievelli’s mentions of him as a prince who achieved good ends through foul deeds.

A quick lookthrough my books indicate that his main campaign in North Africa involved Athenian troops who took 2 minths to walk to Kyrenecia. The back and forth to Sicily seems to have involved himself as a passenger, which indicates a small fast vessel.