Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Erik Prince - War Will Never Be The Same" video.

"We have more flag officers than we did in WW2. We promote too many" In WW2 it was an honor just to be a private soldier. Promotion is one of the primary incentives these days.
1
"In WW2 they only wanted the most lethal and effective leaders" Although if they had a tendency to slap the shell-shocked, they were put in charge of imaginary armies. To be fair, the Germans could not believe that simply striking a private soldier was enough to make the Americans shelve Patton like that, which helped give credence to the idea that "The First Army at Calais" was going to be the first to hop across the channel, at that point.
1
"Amphibious across the Taiwan Straights, that's tough" What role would submersibles play? Seems I've been hearing for decades how surface fleets would be swept away in any modern exchange, just like the USS Arkansas or Nagato all those decades ago.
1
"It's not the steel in our ships that matter, but the steel in our sailors, a British admiral may have said" "There's something wrong with our bloody ships today" - Admiral Beatty definitely said this at the Battle of Jutland, after something like their fourth (under-armored) ship blew up from German fire. The fact that Britain's steel industry could not keep up with (relatively recently united) Germany's output, meant that when the HMS Dreadnought put to sea, Britain had started a naval arms race it could not hope to win.
1
@CBfrmcardiff I see your point that Britain's blockade of Germany gave it the upper hand at the armistice of 1918. I confess I'm required to look at a longer timeframe here, as evidenced by my characterization of Germany's 1870 unification as "recent." The mere existence of the Washington Treaty showed that the British could see Mahan's writing on the wall. The tale of the destruction of the Hood, and the ragtag band that hunted and slew the Bismarck, and the rout of the Europeans by Japan at the outset of America's renewed involvement, shows the extent of sailor's steel in the absence of armor plate. All that said, it really is intriguing to consider that the Yamato probably could not have been sunk by cheap drones. As I mentioned elsewhere though, the fate of the Nagato is still a matter to be considered. Naval use of nuclear weapons would probably not have the apocalyptic repercussions of targeting cities. I hope to God these questions can be settled without another round of live-fire testing, like we had 1941-1945.
1
@dvwjr79 Good point. Fixed.
1
"When General Marshall became chief-of-staff in September 1939, he fired a bunch of generals and colonels" Didn't they typically get reassigned to positions more in keeping with their abilities? Everyone needed to do their bit in that situation, if I have an accurate picture of the times.
1