ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) (01/05/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Saturday, January 4, 1986 11:37PM
Volume 6, Issue 9
Today's Topics:
reluctance to shoot
Aircraft Carriers
Lincoln's estimate of 1000-year war
Russians and WWII
Boof Review [sic]
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Date: Sat, 4 Jan 86 20:13:14 PST
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Subject: reluctance to shoot
> ...something like 50% of the combantants in WWII did not fire their rifles.
This is correct and well-known.
> Most of us have a strong built in mechanism that prevents us from killing
> one of our own species...
It should be noted that this is not necessarily the reason for the reluctance
to shoot. Another relevant fact is that soldiers running squad automatic
weapons (BARs, Brens, etc.) were much more willing to open fire, and firing
tended to spread outward from them. This suggests that the underlying factor
is perception of individual rifle shots as ineffective, rather than evil.
That was a major reason for the interest in providing all soldiers with
fully-automatic rifles.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
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Date: Sat, 4 Jan 86 20:14:20 PST
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Subject: Aircraft Carriers
Jim McGrath writes:
> ...The British were severely hampered by their lack of large
> carriers. The small ones they used could only handle Harriers. While
> these are remarkable aircraft, the engineering compromises involved in
> making them limit range, payload, and performance rather severely.
They have roughly the range, payload, and performance of a late-model
Skyhawk, which the US Navy used for many years and thought highly of.
Except that the Harriers can operate in much more severe weather, since
vertical landings are much less sensitive to deck motion than normal ones.
Granted, Skyhawk-class aircraft are not the ultimate in attack aircraft
(and certainly not the ultimate in air-combat aircraft!), but they are not
the pitifully-limited toys that many people claim. Just ask the US Marines,
who have persistently sacrificed requests for Phantoms and Tomcats -- the
cream of the US Navy fighters -- in favor of requests for more Harriers.
What did hurt the British, badly, was the lack of radar aircraft capable
of operating from small carriers. This they are now correcting, with radar
helicopters as a first step and STOL radar aircraft the probable long-term
solution.
Another consideration which hampered the British, and could have hurt them
very badly if the Argentines had been more aggressive and capable, was having
only two carriers. The overwhelming fact about modern warfare is that loss
rates, for everything, are very high in a sustained conflict between strong
opponents. It is madness to be fundamentally dependent on an asset whose
numbers can be counted on your fingers. Plans for reducing the number of
British carriers were cancelled in the wake of the Falklands War, but they
are still pretty short of them. (They have three Invincible-class carriers
now, with the older Hermes due for retirement.) But the US Navy can't crow
too much about this, with only about a dozen carriers operational, and only
about half of that fleet ready at sea at any given time.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
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Date: Sat, 4 Jan 86 20:15:52 PST
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Subject: Lincoln's estimate of 1000-year war
Robert Elton Maas writes:
> J: From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ at Forsythe>@MIT-MC.ARPA
> [Quote from A.Lincoln...]
> L: All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, ... could not
> L: by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track in the Blue
> L: Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
>
> Lincoln obviously assumed that technology would stand still during a
> 1000-year war. I consider that a gross mistake in judgement (most
> likely an oversight, or a big lie thinking his audience wouldn't
> notice the goof)...
He also didn't mention what happened in the war of 1812, in which quite
small British/Canadian armies did roughly analogous things after the US
tried to invade Canada. Probably he thought it unwise to remind his
audience of the first time the US lost a war. (Yes, lost it: the original
intent was to annex Canada. At the end of the first campaign three
American armies had been wiped out, the only US soldiers on Canadian
soil were prisoners of war, and major parts of three US states were
occupied by British/Canadian troops. The rest of the war basically just
restored the pre-war status quo after a lot of back-and-forth. A bloody,
expensive, total failure. "The attacker must vanquish; the defender need
only survive.")
(Boy, is this going to get me flamed!)
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
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Date: Sat 4 Jan 86 20:18:39-PST
From: Jim McGrath <J.JPM@Epic>
Subject: Russians and WWII
Reply-to: mcgrath%mit-oz@mit-mc.arpa
From: foy@aero
As I recall WWII: ... Russian didn't enter it until she was
attacked,...
Actually, the Russians DID enter WWII before she was attacked, if you
count carving up Poland, invading Finland, and entering into a
neutrality pact with Germany. She just was not on our side until
Germany attacked in 1941. Russia was initially prompted by sheer
territorial greed, and Stalin was simply double crossed by Hitler.
Jim
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Date: Sat, 4 Jan 86 20:17:13 PST
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Subject: Boof Review [sic]
Jim McGrath quotes the following as part of the conclusions from "Hawks,
Doves, and Owls: An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War":
> 8 Limit misperceptions.
> ...
> DON'T treat nuclear weapons like other weapons.
As I recall it, this is directly contradictory to Soviet military philosophy,
which explicitly declares nuclear weapons (tactical ones, anyway) to be just
bigger and nastier forms of artillery. The big black dividing line between
"conventional" and "nuclear" is largely a Western idea, not shared by the
Soviets much. Or so I recall; this is not an area I'm expert in. This
makes me skeptical about the book (which I have not seen yet) -- just how
aware are its authors of the differences between Western and Soviet military
thought? Those differences are substantial, and important.
Also:
> 10 Reduce reliance on nuclear deterrence over the long term.
> DO assume that nuclear deterrence will last forever.
> DON'T intensify the search for alternatives to deterrence.
Did those sub-points get reversed, or am I missing something subtle?
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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