I want to share how much I look forward to each new article. Always something new to learn and the writing and thinking are clear and logical. This blog is a treasure! Thank you to Larry Johnson for pointing me in this direction.
Technology in the battlefield is huge and both sides (Russia/USA) have their strengths. What Russia is doing now is producing high volumes of leading edge drones ( latest is "Binocular", "Penicillin" was rolled out about 6 weeks ago, and I'm hearing about multiple others) , and UGV (Terminator, etc. ) The bottom line is that Russia has the technology + industrial production capacity to overwhelm the opponents, all 20 or so countries in NATO. Russia will grind and pulverize the remaining Ukraine/NATO Army to the Dnieper river, and will take Nikolayev and Odessa. Ukraine will be landlocked and then forgotten by the West. Its clear to me that Russia has already strategically defeated NATO, and will achieve more than its stated SMO objectives.
This adds to something i read the other day. To paraphrase, the Ukraine conflict is to WW3 what the Spanish Civil War was to WW2. This is where the new ideas are tested and practiced. Its what comes after this that is going to be the big show.
Next you need to take on the electromagnetic spectrum, EW, and HAARP is a great place to start:
Weather modification (droughts), communications disruption, over the earth phased radar, earth-quake creation (Turkey?), and brain-hacking. Our brains are apparently electro-magnetic?
For all these robot thingies, didn't they use EMP way back in the Matrix. Tactical Neutron bomb?
How an these robots be programmed without the three laws?
Thank you for a clear exposition! The last paragraph, esp. its end, is (in a way) optimistic, as well as horrible! Sadly, the question might be: Why it has to be through war and killings that we can get through our dark age?
1. AI is the technology that will determine the future’s winner -- which will be AI.
2. You reasonably make the point that the war is likely to progress to where it is predominantly NATO personnel sitting in safety controlling weapons killing Russians in Ukraine. That leads inevitably to a Russian response hitting those personnel who thought they were sitting in safety, which means opening up the war to all of European military locations and airborne contributions, and potentially military locations in the US. Lack of such a response almost certainly means Russia loses.
> ... mimicking the staid European-Napoleonic style of warfare. Large processions of troops marching in orderly columns, fusillading each other with muzzle-loading muskets fired from long, even rows...
Napoleon preferred to organise his troops in columns instead of lines, and send them in mass bayonet charges against the enemy's line formations.
Immediately before his rise to power, it was found that crude mass tactics such as the outlined above worked very well, as through those Revolutionary France managed to repel invading armies of Loyalists and neighbouring absolutist monarchies in the early 1790s. Republican French troops were basically commoners barely able to fire a flintlock, and with no time for learning the cursory rote muscle memory training and discipline necessary to coordinate line infantry tactics and movements. But bayonet charges - benefiting from the momentum offered by their superior numbers - turned out to be more than a match against the elaborate line formation tactics that dominated XVIII century warfare.
Other than that, Napoleon's innovations consisted in effectively employing flying batteries of artillery quickly moved along the line of battle where most needed. Also, on the operational level, he broke all records of marching speed for an army up to then, and was an ace in manoeuvring his armies so that they would befall on the enemy simultaneously and from multiple directions, at a field of battle most often a place of his choosing.
Now imagine that you're engaged in existential peer-to-peer warfare and the enemy is "winning" by virtue of its superiority in electronic weaponry. At some point, as the conflict become dire, it becomes necessary to play the EMP card and a new paradigm is now thrust upon all combatants. Perhaps you can war-game what happens next.
Feb 28, 2023·edited Feb 28, 2023Liked by Simplicius
> For instance, long, cumbersome muskets like the Springfield 1861 model had made it necessary to stand while reloading, as the process of tipping the powder horn into the muzzle, ramming down the shot, was best done with the musket in a stable, upright position. This naturally articulated itself into the standard tactic of three, rotating rows of men —one row firing, then stepping back to reload while the next steps forward to fire. Reloading on the ground was clunky or nigh impossible, as tipping the powder into the barrel was difficult if the rifle is horizontal, accessing your pouches holding the powder, shot, stuffing, etc., more awkward.
The Springfield 1861 employed paper cartridges. Its firing mechanism had a percussion cap, the musket shot Minie' balls, so definitely paper cartridges. Therefore, no flask... this is admittedly very picky criticism, as effectively they only averaged 3 shots per minute max, which is the average for a muzzle-loaded musket.
> But with the introduction of repeating rifles, which saw increased circulation during the middle period of the war, troops could now lie flat in cover, and fire off salvos of multiple shots without having to reload. This opened a whole new paradigm of warfare, breaking free from the Napoleonic rigidity which previously dominated. Troops could now be more mobile, fire from crouched positions like snipers. Smaller, nimbler groups became increasingly effective. Additionally, the emergence of rifled barrels (rather than smoothbore) gave a vastly improved accuracy which forced both sides to begin ‘digging in’ and fighting more from covered positions to avoid the progressing lethality of the new ballistic characteristics. After several years, the war which started as a pastiche of the Napoleonic era suddenly devolved into one often featuring trench warfare...
Napoleonic warfare was very brutal and kinetic, your description of hieratic line formations shooting at each other happened earlier in the XVIII century...
Napoleon had skirmisher troops, the Vortigeurs, who used muzzle-loaded rifled muskets and were deployed in open formation. Before Napoleon, the Americans during their independence war had fur trappers and hunters enlisted as the equivalent of modern day snipers, chiefly because of their dexterity in using particular, very long muzzle-loaded rifled muskets developed in colonial North America. Either of those corps had to use mallets to ram the ball down the rifle barrel. Rifling a barrel to increase shot accuracy was a technique that had been known since the Renaissance. But modern precision machining technology, necessary to fit the ball smoothly inside the barrel, was not yet available.
Line formation tactics were the only effective tactic available to smoothbore-wielding musketeers, because the ball would in fact bounce up and down a smoothbore barrel when shot, its consequent trajectory unpredictable. So, aiming was impossible and they had to resort on mass shooting directly in front of them, and rely on the law of probability that any of the balls would hit the enemy wall of musketeers facing them.
Curiously, the American Army had been very innovative in the 1820s in adopting an early breech-loaded rifle, the Halls, which was put to use in the war against Mexico some years before the civil war. It was a decisively more accurate weapon than either the Enfield or the Springfield. However, it was outshone by those two muzzle-loaders because of its much reduced penetrating power. Due to imperfect precision machining technology, the fire chamber could not be sealed and released gas to rear at each shot, lowering the pressure propelling the projectile inside and resulting in a wimpy weak shot.
Back in the 1960s, we built rather large scale model powered airplanes, so the tech to run drones has existed for decades. What deterred it was man--he had to be in control. Now we have the world of the Terminator on the horizon since nobody ever thought to enact Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics made in the 1940s. Jets can do far more outrageous acrobatics unmanned--hypersonic fighter planes. Droid Armies. And yes, the nation having the most capable system of promoting its human capital so all brains have the opportunity to contribute will be in the vanguard. Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and others have known that formula and are very motivated to see it succeed and thus support it.
You already know my view on drone usage. The next development IMO must be an electronic cloaking device to makes the object invisible to the sensor suite, otherwise human infantry will eventually vanish to be replaced by droids. Then we have the resource issue becoming what nation has the resources to produce combat droids in vast numbers. And I doubt those droids will look anything like those from Star Wars or anywhere near anthropogenic. So, yes, your premise is sound and being proven as I type. I have no problem imagining all sorts of different engineer droids made to deal with fortifications that would replace human infantry.
Forget about drones then: the correct way of thinking forward into the future would lead to satellite capabilities as the ultimate surveillance system. Capable of scanning every nook and cranny all over the planet, they can positively identify, from Space, what lurks behind any blade of grass.
Counter that with star wars: laser and ion cannon systems (orbital aircraft? proper starships?) used to eliminate each other, and then the satellites.
Consequently, on the Earth surface, only missile silos are needed. Once the enemy satellite surveillance is disabled by the star wars, his decision centres will be hit by missiles.
Perhaps it will be possible to shoot from silos even projectiles the size of bullets: intercontinental, AI-guided rifle bullets that will kill with surgical accuracy, shot from Madrid not missing a mark in Buenos Aires. There will be no need of Army, Navy, combatants in general. Drones as observing arm will be a transient technology, satellites are the way into the future.
Beautiful last paragraph. Thank you!
I want to share how much I look forward to each new article. Always something new to learn and the writing and thinking are clear and logical. This blog is a treasure! Thank you to Larry Johnson for pointing me in this direction.
Technology in the battlefield is huge and both sides (Russia/USA) have their strengths. What Russia is doing now is producing high volumes of leading edge drones ( latest is "Binocular", "Penicillin" was rolled out about 6 weeks ago, and I'm hearing about multiple others) , and UGV (Terminator, etc. ) The bottom line is that Russia has the technology + industrial production capacity to overwhelm the opponents, all 20 or so countries in NATO. Russia will grind and pulverize the remaining Ukraine/NATO Army to the Dnieper river, and will take Nikolayev and Odessa. Ukraine will be landlocked and then forgotten by the West. Its clear to me that Russia has already strategically defeated NATO, and will achieve more than its stated SMO objectives.
This adds to something i read the other day. To paraphrase, the Ukraine conflict is to WW3 what the Spanish Civil War was to WW2. This is where the new ideas are tested and practiced. Its what comes after this that is going to be the big show.
How far behind is Russia's domestic computer chip industry compared to the US/China? Do we know for certain? I've seen a lot of conflicting opinions.
Edit: added question mark
Great article.
Next you need to take on the electromagnetic spectrum, EW, and HAARP is a great place to start:
Weather modification (droughts), communications disruption, over the earth phased radar, earth-quake creation (Turkey?), and brain-hacking. Our brains are apparently electro-magnetic?
For all these robot thingies, didn't they use EMP way back in the Matrix. Tactical Neutron bomb?
How an these robots be programmed without the three laws?
Thank you for a clear exposition! The last paragraph, esp. its end, is (in a way) optimistic, as well as horrible! Sadly, the question might be: Why it has to be through war and killings that we can get through our dark age?
1. AI is the technology that will determine the future’s winner -- which will be AI.
2. You reasonably make the point that the war is likely to progress to where it is predominantly NATO personnel sitting in safety controlling weapons killing Russians in Ukraine. That leads inevitably to a Russian response hitting those personnel who thought they were sitting in safety, which means opening up the war to all of European military locations and airborne contributions, and potentially military locations in the US. Lack of such a response almost certainly means Russia loses.
Excellent article, as usual. One nitpick and one bit of historical trivia:
AI is a misnomer (that everyone uses), it should be ML.
First use of anti air artillery was in WWI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radoje_Ljutovac
> ... mimicking the staid European-Napoleonic style of warfare. Large processions of troops marching in orderly columns, fusillading each other with muzzle-loading muskets fired from long, even rows...
Napoleon preferred to organise his troops in columns instead of lines, and send them in mass bayonet charges against the enemy's line formations.
Immediately before his rise to power, it was found that crude mass tactics such as the outlined above worked very well, as through those Revolutionary France managed to repel invading armies of Loyalists and neighbouring absolutist monarchies in the early 1790s. Republican French troops were basically commoners barely able to fire a flintlock, and with no time for learning the cursory rote muscle memory training and discipline necessary to coordinate line infantry tactics and movements. But bayonet charges - benefiting from the momentum offered by their superior numbers - turned out to be more than a match against the elaborate line formation tactics that dominated XVIII century warfare.
Other than that, Napoleon's innovations consisted in effectively employing flying batteries of artillery quickly moved along the line of battle where most needed. Also, on the operational level, he broke all records of marching speed for an army up to then, and was an ace in manoeuvring his armies so that they would befall on the enemy simultaneously and from multiple directions, at a field of battle most often a place of his choosing.
Now imagine that you're engaged in existential peer-to-peer warfare and the enemy is "winning" by virtue of its superiority in electronic weaponry. At some point, as the conflict become dire, it becomes necessary to play the EMP card and a new paradigm is now thrust upon all combatants. Perhaps you can war-game what happens next.
> For instance, long, cumbersome muskets like the Springfield 1861 model had made it necessary to stand while reloading, as the process of tipping the powder horn into the muzzle, ramming down the shot, was best done with the musket in a stable, upright position. This naturally articulated itself into the standard tactic of three, rotating rows of men —one row firing, then stepping back to reload while the next steps forward to fire. Reloading on the ground was clunky or nigh impossible, as tipping the powder into the barrel was difficult if the rifle is horizontal, accessing your pouches holding the powder, shot, stuffing, etc., more awkward.
The Springfield 1861 employed paper cartridges. Its firing mechanism had a percussion cap, the musket shot Minie' balls, so definitely paper cartridges. Therefore, no flask... this is admittedly very picky criticism, as effectively they only averaged 3 shots per minute max, which is the average for a muzzle-loaded musket.
> But with the introduction of repeating rifles, which saw increased circulation during the middle period of the war, troops could now lie flat in cover, and fire off salvos of multiple shots without having to reload. This opened a whole new paradigm of warfare, breaking free from the Napoleonic rigidity which previously dominated. Troops could now be more mobile, fire from crouched positions like snipers. Smaller, nimbler groups became increasingly effective. Additionally, the emergence of rifled barrels (rather than smoothbore) gave a vastly improved accuracy which forced both sides to begin ‘digging in’ and fighting more from covered positions to avoid the progressing lethality of the new ballistic characteristics. After several years, the war which started as a pastiche of the Napoleonic era suddenly devolved into one often featuring trench warfare...
Napoleonic warfare was very brutal and kinetic, your description of hieratic line formations shooting at each other happened earlier in the XVIII century...
Napoleon had skirmisher troops, the Vortigeurs, who used muzzle-loaded rifled muskets and were deployed in open formation. Before Napoleon, the Americans during their independence war had fur trappers and hunters enlisted as the equivalent of modern day snipers, chiefly because of their dexterity in using particular, very long muzzle-loaded rifled muskets developed in colonial North America. Either of those corps had to use mallets to ram the ball down the rifle barrel. Rifling a barrel to increase shot accuracy was a technique that had been known since the Renaissance. But modern precision machining technology, necessary to fit the ball smoothly inside the barrel, was not yet available.
Line formation tactics were the only effective tactic available to smoothbore-wielding musketeers, because the ball would in fact bounce up and down a smoothbore barrel when shot, its consequent trajectory unpredictable. So, aiming was impossible and they had to resort on mass shooting directly in front of them, and rely on the law of probability that any of the balls would hit the enemy wall of musketeers facing them.
Curiously, the American Army had been very innovative in the 1820s in adopting an early breech-loaded rifle, the Halls, which was put to use in the war against Mexico some years before the civil war. It was a decisively more accurate weapon than either the Enfield or the Springfield. However, it was outshone by those two muzzle-loaders because of its much reduced penetrating power. Due to imperfect precision machining technology, the fire chamber could not be sealed and released gas to rear at each shot, lowering the pressure propelling the projectile inside and resulting in a wimpy weak shot.
And when the war is over, this technology will have had its testing ground for other purposes.
Back in the 1960s, we built rather large scale model powered airplanes, so the tech to run drones has existed for decades. What deterred it was man--he had to be in control. Now we have the world of the Terminator on the horizon since nobody ever thought to enact Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics made in the 1940s. Jets can do far more outrageous acrobatics unmanned--hypersonic fighter planes. Droid Armies. And yes, the nation having the most capable system of promoting its human capital so all brains have the opportunity to contribute will be in the vanguard. Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and others have known that formula and are very motivated to see it succeed and thus support it.
You already know my view on drone usage. The next development IMO must be an electronic cloaking device to makes the object invisible to the sensor suite, otherwise human infantry will eventually vanish to be replaced by droids. Then we have the resource issue becoming what nation has the resources to produce combat droids in vast numbers. And I doubt those droids will look anything like those from Star Wars or anywhere near anthropogenic. So, yes, your premise is sound and being proven as I type. I have no problem imagining all sorts of different engineer droids made to deal with fortifications that would replace human infantry.
Forget about drones then: the correct way of thinking forward into the future would lead to satellite capabilities as the ultimate surveillance system. Capable of scanning every nook and cranny all over the planet, they can positively identify, from Space, what lurks behind any blade of grass.
Counter that with star wars: laser and ion cannon systems (orbital aircraft? proper starships?) used to eliminate each other, and then the satellites.
Consequently, on the Earth surface, only missile silos are needed. Once the enemy satellite surveillance is disabled by the star wars, his decision centres will be hit by missiles.
Perhaps it will be possible to shoot from silos even projectiles the size of bullets: intercontinental, AI-guided rifle bullets that will kill with surgical accuracy, shot from Madrid not missing a mark in Buenos Aires. There will be no need of Army, Navy, combatants in general. Drones as observing arm will be a transient technology, satellites are the way into the future.
Really imformative column like always. Thank you for your effort. PEACE.