Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Military History not Visualized"
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Don't worry, the Russian military have been the same for centuries. It simply cannot help itself.
Its problems are so many and so overwhelming that only a small portion of them can be fixed within a decade in peace time. But Russia is not in peace time. Its best troops are dead since half a year ago, and you will need years before you can replace them. Much of Russias best equipment had been destroyed - and that Soviet made junk is something that Russia neither has the ability to produce and there are no one who knows how to build those advanced weapons anymore.
And then on top of that are they struggeling with all the sanctions....
Their top down military doctrine has been idiotic and led to massive losses and defeats every war they have fought. But transitioning over to Auftragstaktik is so far fetched from traditional russian military thinking that a transition can never be easily done soon - and especially not in the middle of a war.
The major flaws in the Russian military are so many that you cannot name them all.
Their crappy logistics, their lack of coordination, their lack of personal iniative, the corruption, the crappy planning, the lack of professionalism, the lack of sequenceing , the mismatch of equipment and doctrine of the old Soviet military which could focused on winning over its enemy by quantity while Russia today is a country with severe demographic problems with falling birthrates...
You have Putin who interferes in military operations by for example telling his tanks to rush towards Kyiv without infantry support in the beginning of this war - and the result became ambushes and catastrophic tank losses.
You have soldiers who spends more time trying to find food and fuel by looting because of the crappy logistics in the Russian army, than they are spending time on preparing for battle. So this makes this unprofessional army ineffective in combat, and it destroy the good relation it wished it had with the civilian population which was supposed to see the Russian military as liberators.
And stealing mobile phones not only makes an army hated - it have also allowed the Ukrainians to track down the same stolen phones and listen to Russian soldiers phone calls back home. And this allows them to hear about fighting morale among the Russian military and society, what the conditions are like, where the Russian troops are positioned, what the plans are and so on...
And then are the russian military also relying on western tech like civlian GPS:es in their aircrafts.
And the idea of forcing Ukrainians to become Russians by taking away their Ukrainian passports and force them to use Rubles and a Russian passport instead is about to backfire. Now you got a large russian speaking Ukrainian population that is very hostile towards russia which now have a russian passport and which can blend in perfectly with the russian population everywhere in Russia and can make sabotage behind enemy lines against military, political and industrial targets.
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@williamzk9083 Nope. The Ferdinand tank had the best kill ratio and that was an incredibly crappy machine with excessive weight, an unreliable underpowered engine, horrible gun traverse, ineffiecent use of armor with lack of sloping, an overcomplicated design that made it difficult to repair and to build those tanks.
StuG3 was on paper an unremarkable vehicle. It did not have the best gun, best armor, best mobility or best optics.
It was a vehicle that cheap and easy to mass produce and allowed germany to fill up the frontline with armored vehicles as you could get 3 stugs for the same cost as 2 tanks. And this vehicle also turned out to have a kill ratio 3 to 1. Which was good but perhaps not good enough for winning the war given that allied tank prouduction was so enormous that the germans would have needed a kill ratio more like 10 to 1 to win.
The StuG also became more and more underpowered as the war progressed. Had the war rolled on for another 1-2 years, then I believe that StuG would been unable to penetrate ISU152, IS3, and have much difficulties with Centurion, Pershing, T44 and such.
I think was mostly liked because it was a vehicle that could easily get mass produced and it had a good gun and frontal armor by say 1942
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@Fang70
But after having seen hundreds of videos with drone strikes its undeniable that drones have inflicted heavy tank losses. And Ukraines own losses have also been heavy due to drones, all archer artillery have been damaged due to drone strikes.
And that both sides use cope cages can be a symptom of drones being a bigger threat than in previous wars. Hamas destruction of an Israeli Merkava could also indicate that a new threat dimension have entered into the battlefield even for the very safety minded israelis.
The effectivness of top attacks has been known since World war 2. But when Sweden created the first top attack missile known as BILL56 did a new family of top attack missiles get born out of the same idea - such as the Swedish NLAW and the American Javelin.
Sweden also started the development of smart artillery rounds like BONUS and Excalibur that with the combination of drone artillery observation have wrecked devestation on Russian tank forces.
It is also a well known fact that the Soviet tanks have a weakspot in the top hull armor in the area around the turret. The armor there is very thin, and just under the thin skin lay the large auto-loader full with explosives. So one RPG hit there from a FPV drone could make the ammunition explode and send the turret up into space and leave the tank as a burning wreck with no survivors.
So it is common to see Ukrainian drones target this area just in front of the turret or behind it.
In the past was artillery not very accurate. There was no special precision ammunition, drone observed artillery and high quality guns capable of hitting targets so far away. Especially not moving targets. So tanks had a bit of safety in their mobility in the past. But not so much today as precision artillery have become a much more dangerous threat.
FPV drones are also capable of hunting moving targets in a way that artillery never have been able to. And a cheap drone of 400 dollars is capable of destroying a tank by hitting the weakspot near the turret for example. Its said that the Ukrainian drones have little over a 50% hit rate. I guess that some drones hit and makes no damage, or just blow a track off so another drone easily can kill a vehicle.
But still is this a very cost effective way of fighting a war. And one does not put ones own soldiers at risk of direct enemy fire.
So I think the drone threat needs more consideration now. There are even disgusting videos one can watch how individual soldiers are hunted by fast drones that rams their victims with a RPG grenade.
Even I have to feel sympathy for Ivan in that situation. War has become a dystopian nightmare with killer robots that can outcompete us humans in every way. That russian soldier I saw blew up had no chance to defend himself or run away - because the drones are much faster, nearly impossible to hit, impossible for a human to see in the dark, and now they are so cheap that they no longer just attack vehicles or troop concentrations but also individual soldiers.
And the future will probably become even more horrible as AI, better sensors, and lowered costs for mass production will make those weapons cheaper and even more effective than today.
The very fact that the Ukrainians have been able to hold the line this winter shows that drones are a powerful weapon. Holding the line would not have been possible when Ukraine was only able to fire 1000-2000 artillery rounds per day against a foe that fires 10.000 and have twice as many troops and much more armor.
FPV drones have been an artillery substitute. Perhaps a bit like Stuka bombers and artillery partially could replace each other during world war 2.
Of course can they not completely replace each other, as they both have strengths and weaknesses compared to each other. Drones are like I said more effective at hunting moving targets. But artillery is more reliable to use on rainy and windy days. And there is probably a reason why Ukraine desperatly begs the west for more artillery ammunition, and not only for more drones.
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@nobodyherepal3292 I am impressed by the German army in World war 1. Think about it. The Austro-Hungrian army was a depleted force after the first 5 months of the war, as it had lost 2/3 of its men by then including all its elite infantry such as the Kaiserjäger. It only took 3 big battles with Russia (which were lost) and a failed invasion of Serbia to cut off the wings of this army for the rest of the war.
The Ottoman empire joined the war a few months later, and everyone expected it to greatly boost the front against Russia by walking up to Ukraine and stand up arms to arms with the Germans and Austrians on the southern flank on the eastern front. But they too were a great dissapointment, just like the Austrians. Instead did Enver Pasha think it was a great idea to walk up the Armenian mountains - which was excellent defensive terrain and difficult to pass logistics wise. 200.000 men froze to death in the winter on top of the cold mountains or got killed by enemy fire.
So by 1915 Germany basically had to fight an entire world war almost completly on its own. But yet it was able to defeat Serbia, and Romania, and Russia. It was at the brink of crushing France in 1914, but was forced to move forces to the east to protect Germany because Austro-Hungria failed to protect the eastern flank as promised.
And then it nearly destroyed the French army again in 1917, as the French had just done the catastrophic Nivelle offensive with enormous losses, and the entire French army started to mutiny and refused to fight. The officers responded with executions of leaders of the revolt, but nothing helped to stop it. Strangely did Germany never get any intelligence reports of the bad state of the morale of the French army - because had it known how bad it was, then it would likely had launched a final big offensive against it to break the camels back.
But in the end would the situation calm down in the French army, after the officers had to give in and promise their men to never again do any offensive operations and stay on the defensive for the rest of the war.
The German army also managed to occupy most of Belgium during the war, and the Belgian army never had the numbers to stand up to the German military in this war on its own.
And the British army was basically wiped out in 1914. And in the battle of Somme it suffered perhaps the worst day in British military history. Tanks won some terrain, but German auftragstaktik and stosstroppen managed to beat back the attack and take back all lost terrain, plus some more land.
Also Italy was beaten back by the Germans in this war.
So almost by its own had Germany managed to defeat all of Europe. One can speculate about the reasons for this
if it was because they were early to learn the usefulness of uniforms with colors that blended in with the enviroment.
Or if it was their heavy emphasis on engineer troops and teaching all its conscripts to often use the spade to dig in.
Or if it was their wisdom to retreat in 1914 and build their defensive line on the best terrain on hill tops and such so they could look down on the allied lines and have an overview of the battlefield and see what their enemies were up to and not having to bother as much about rain flooding their trenches - which was a much more common problem for the allies. Its defence it dept with 3 defensive lines (compared to to two for the French and British) was also harder for an enemy to penetrate and saved lives for the defender.
Or maybe the German success was because of the german industry, and its advanced chemical industry in particular was very innovative. And that the clock was not ticking in Germany's favor if the war turned into a war of attrition so that Germany was forced to innovate new war winning weapons fast to gain victory. So it was an early user of poison gas, flamethrowers, zeppelins and uboats and other morally objectionable weapons. And it also started to experiment with new types of tactics like the stosstroppen. And those men did also bring much firepower to the frontline. And already as early as 1914 did Bavarian units start to use that concept. And the German wisdom of using mortars gave them a devestating superiority in firepower. And BEF was trashed and its chief John French had a nervous breakdown. And the French army suffered enormous unsubstainable losses. The Germans were fighting heavily outnumbered against 3 Europeans armies at once, plus lots colonial troops... and yet were they winning and their own losses were relativly mild by comparison.
So germany did on its own beat Serbia, Russia, Romania, Belgium, Italy, France and Britain plus their colonies before all 4 years of attrition and the arrival of American troops finally wore it down.
And I would say that superior artillery fire power and stosstropp tactics were probably the biggest reasons for this.
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"combat casualties, what causes them (small arms, artillery etc"
In the war on the eastern front did artillery cause 45% of the casualties, 35% was done by heavy infantry weapons (mortars, machine guns), light infantry weapons 10% airpower 5% and tanks/armour 5%.
"percentage killed, wounded or captured, the average death rate for a combat soldier"
I guess that depends on what type of unit you are talking about. Losses among infantry might for example be higher than those for artillery so that divisions become more unbalanced as the war progress.
"The impression one gets from film and TV, even from the more realistic films and series like Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, is seemingly constant death, men falling left,right and centre, which simply isn't true"
Some battles are more bloody than others.
More Swedes died in the battle of Lund in 1676 than Americans in Normandy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lund
2000 Americans died there, while both the Germans and the Russians suffered losses of 10.000 each every day during the battle of Stalingrad.
My guess based on nothing but gut feeling would say that 20% losses would be a rough average for most big hard battles. But I am sure there could also exist extreme cases when the losses could reach 80%.
For example did Paraguay lose 70% of its population in its war 1864-70, and basicly all its male population was dead when the war was over.
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@jorehir Every economist seems to have their own opinion on this topic. David Landes thinks that Europe always was more prosperous than Asia. While Sinophiles like Kenneth Pommeranz claims that Europe did not get ahead of Asia until the 1800's. Personally I belong to the crowd of economists like Johan Söderberg who claims Asia was more advanced during the middle ages, and then around the 1600's were Europe and Asia on an equal footing, and then did Europe outperform Asia.
I think part of Europes strengths was its ability to import foreign technologies and put them to use - like the compass, gun powder, the printing press, paper, foreign crops, etc.
But not everything was about the rise of the western world either. Other parts of the world did also decline a bit. Densely populated countries like Egypt was much harder hit by the bubonic plague than Europe on average. The Mongols destroyed irrigation systems in Persia and Mesopotamia and thereby caused so much damage that those places could never recover for centuries. And the world metropol, centre of learning and trade center of the silk road - Bagdad was also completely destroyed by the Mongols who slaughtered about a million people there.
But the muslim rulers also had other problems which caused the end of the islamic golden age. Less conquests led to less plunder and profits. And as non-muslims converted to islam was rulers forced to raise taxes on the muslim population to fill the budget holes. Badly maintained terraces meant lower agricultural output, as top soil was blown away with the wind and the ground accumulated salt.
Then many farmers switched over to livestock instead - which were an even worse thing for the ecologically sensitive ground in North Africa and the Middle East. And without irrigation did farmlands quickly turn into deserts or wildgrown tropical wetlands - unlike Europe. And unlike Europe was there no other alternative uses for lands when it had been wasted and turned into desert. And MENA countries have always suffered from a shortage of wood. This gave Europeans an advantage as they had more and cheaper wood so they could lower their production costs of making glass, iron/steel/metal, and building ships, windmills, and terraces etc.
European goods became cheaper, while muslim goods became more expensive due to timber shortages, and got outcompeted. By the 1600's had the Ottoman manufacturing industry that made glass and textiles started to become out competed in the Mediterranean and unable to keep up its lucrative trade with Italy and South Eastern Europe. And the trade in the Indian ocean was severely disrupted by the Portuguese who tried to blockade the Ocean and create a trade monopoly in it. And this, along with the great distances to America did also pose obstacles for muslim colonization.
And when Europeans had found the sea way to India and China did also the volume of trade along the silk road fall - and that meant less trade and less taxes to government coffers.
So the muslim governments faced a shortage for tax money from all directions while their small manufacturing base was declining. And products which earlier had been popular - such as spices, fell out of favor and fell in price and became less profitable to sell as European costumers shifted over their interests to products like sugar, coffee and tobacco.
The Ottomans had been outplayed economically. But they did however remain a great military power throughout the 1600's until their expansion stopped.
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