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.
It sounds to me like you are doing a lot of "projection", projecting the failures of the West onto Russia. State Dept spends most of their time doing that as well as USA bozo politicians like Killary Clinton and Mafia Don Senile Joe, not to mention real winners like Lindsay Graham. If you actually dig beyond your throwaway lines you might learn the truth. Lets chat again here in 3-4 months and compare notes, shall we?
Unfortunately my country does not allow me to check whether Russians are being fed propaganda or not. If it's only lies and propaganda what are they afraid of?
Nobody is buying Russia debt? That's because most of the West is barred from purchasing anything denominated in rubles. Except for a few of Wall Street and London's in-crowd.
Good, people weren't as brainwashed 20 years ago. Fighting the US from 20 years ago would have been much more difficult than its current TikTok iteration, it had leaders with actual brains instead of memes.
lol, thats everyone's problem, US's main force projectors in Asia, Korea and Japan lead the way in that. Not even China or India can escape this factor. And neither has the West, despite its imports of black and brown people, they still need countless more. Assuming the ones they imported are useful in their machine, so far that hasn't been the case. But you keep dreaming, maybe the brown person changing your adult diaper in the future might just smother you in your sleep instead when he gets tired of your wrinkled ass.
The demographics problem is a globally widespread one, and in Ukraine its been catalyzed by 8 years of civil war.
Back in 2019 German TV did record dating shows about Germans visiting Kiev to meet Ukrainian women, for marriage, through some paid agency. It's kind of creepy how the narrator just comments on the situation ala "Due to war Ukraine has an oversupply of women".
By now the situation is much more dire, as Ukraine is by now in its like 8 round of mobilization, and after the Russian invasion millions of Ukrainians fled the country, nearly 3 million of them to Russia.
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.
it has no actual chip industry, Soviets tried to build one but didnt manage in time before old head stain and drunky took it down. They have some old larger nm, small quantity productions, but the rest is Chinese imports. One of Russia greatest failures is its abandoning self-reliance in favour of oligarchs stealing assets.
It seems they always have had a minor chip industry as you point out but rely on China. But they are better off than france, germany, spain, canada, italy etc as they have no chip industry at all and the few us names i clicked on are all in taiwan anyway
Take out the factory that builds the low nm machines and the entire west will suffer a chip shortage. This is the foolish part of globalization. Too many eggs in one basket. This war should have never happened.
Perhaps Russia's chip industry is behind. I can't comment to that. But the Ukrainian and Russian engineers and techs that I have worked with in my career could perform board level repairs that I can't. Nor can most American engineers. We're rich. When a printed circuit board fails we order a new one. The Russians and Ukrainians fix them. If a capacitor pops or a resistor fries it's not an issue for them.
Thats interesting and not all that surprising. Decades of “subbing it out” will take it’s toll on the USA, in fact it already has. When Russia finally cuts them off from neon, titanium and various other goods there will be a mad scramble. But it may be that at that point the RoW and the Equatorial South in particular will have armed up sufficiently to repel a new wave of industrial colonialism. The chasm between Russian manufacturing aesthetics as compared to the USA and the West generally is huge. Ruggedly built, easy to use and repairable hardware will never go out of style and will continue to work in the most adverse conditions. In the case of EMPs and related countermeasure it might be good to have analog goods within arms reach.
I heard an observation, I believe from Jim Rickards, that 70% of the world's neon is made in Odessa. I was not aware of this. So that makes Odessa a very strategic city indeed. And I thought it was just a fun place to visit. It's interesting that my Missouri Congresscritter was very protective of the many US federal operations in Ukraine prior to the Russian SMO. I paid a personal visit to one of her local offices in 2021 to voice my displeasure at the amount of money going to Ukraine but I wasn't sure just how involved we were. Her staff's response certainly confirmed it. My guess is those ops were providing her a lot of campaign contributions.
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.
You forget, control at a distance implies a control signal, which means radio spectrum, which can be jammed...easily.
Notice how very little video comes out of zones where Russia is using its full panoply of EW equipment? It's not coincidental... Simplicius even embedded a video where this was touched on a few posts back
that's true, I was going to write a whole disclaimer (but thought better of it) that my usage of the term "AI" is a bit broader and more colloquial in the sense that I'm referring to all types of algorithmic 'smart' applications rather than the more narrow definition some people view AI as something approaching sentience and conversational/thinking ability like a ChatGTP or something like that. It was more for the sake of shorthand.
and thanks for link, hah, that's funny--so Serbs were always the kings of shooting down the undownable from the very beginning ;-)
> ... 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.
Very good info thanks. I also heard that he didn't rely as much on elite infantry as you stated above but prized elite cavalry more, for the same reason that he was the king of maneuver and speed and loved to use those 2 attributes to great effect while infantry served more of a pinning force IIRC
Yup he loved to split his forces, force march them on the enemy from several directions and compel him to accept battle at a disadvantage. Clearly hussars and dragoons played a major role in scouting, shadowing and harassing the enemy force, and mop up the stranded after the battle.
I've read hundreds of books on the Napoleonic Wars. I found Big Serge's analysis of the rise (and downfall) of Napoleon's methods of war the clearest I have come across.
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.
You can't put a Faraday cage around everything, and a theater-sized nuke at high altitude will pulse through even "hardened" electrics and electronics (particularly circuit boards). And the longer we used advanced weapons, the harder it will be to transition back to conventional martial combat methods. One million dollar nuke takes out billions of dollars of smart weapons and supporting equipment.
> 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.
Thanks, and you're right about those. However I viewed most of those instances more as outliers, and my attempt was to characterize more of the general totality / gestalt of the warfare typified by these particular eras I highlighted. So for instance, it's known that yes, during the Revolutionary War, Minute Men also were sometimes mobile and darting through the woods and using more 'modern tactics' at times, however to characterize the main bent of warfare during this era as such would be obviously wrong. Similarly, while the Napoleonic era did have skirmishers and phases of the combat where it was not so 'prim and pretty' as described, the combat in a general sense can still be described as being grounded in these types of described formations, rather than being closer to the 'chaotic trench warfare' end of the spectrum. While outliers did exist in almost every fashion, the Civil War, to me, marked a turning point at least insofar as American warfighting goes, from which there was "no turning back." Whereas the other examples may have had outliers but in general even AFTERwards, warfare of that era still reverted back to the tropisms of the day.
But still your details are invaluable, so I thank you.
I just felt we needed to give Napoleon his fair share: he is the most consequential military man ever, arguably the most brilliant general in history. He'd be known as Napoleon the Great, if "Napoleon" weren't a silly name compared to Alexander or Charles.
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.
You're right, and to some extent they already have it -- for instance Russia's Kh-101 cruise missile which has been the bread and butter of all the recent cruise missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, is said to have a EW jamming suite which has already seemingly been witnessed screwing with AFU air defenses. There were a few videos showing Kh-101's passing by towards Kiev, and the Ukrainian AD missiles flying right past it or strangely whizzing off in a random direction nearby as if they were suddenly 'spooked' by something electronic.
The smaller drones are too small to have such powerful suites simply because typically EW jamming is a byproduct of electrical power, i.e. the more power generated the more powerful the signal. And these huge cruise missiles with their turbine engines can generate enough power it seems to produce a strong counter signal, but small drones with their flimsy batteries can't do this. So it would likely take much larger drones to be able to produce strong enough jamming signals.
Thanks for your reply. The future battlefield issue I brought into the discussion about the coming Congressional attempt to launch the Anti-China New Cold War that b wrote about today at MoA. Here's what I wrote so you don't have to search for it:
"As noted by others on the Ukie thread, the current essay by Simplicius76, "The Changing Face Of War - Future of the Russian SMO", describes the real fear lurking behind current Congressional actions: The coming AI/Dorid/Drone weaponry that will emerge as an outcome of the struggle against Unipolarity of which the SMO is a part. Congress cannot undo what's already been done to drive China and Russia together along with the RoW, that latter bit it's ignoring to its peril. Furthermore, Congress completely ignores another vital fact--Outlaw US Empire geoeconomic dependence on China. A look at the trade ledger tells the story there as a huge percentage of real GDP is generated by that trade. Ouch! As a result, the fact that the Outlaw US Empire is actually facing a deficit in power versus China isn't being seen for the great negative it is. What Congress really needs to ask is this: Is trying to remain on top of the hill really a vital US interest or will the attempt merely accelerate the USA's decline?
"As b notes, the USA is facing serious deficits in key resources but there's no mention of the really important deficit carrying great weight that Simplicius does mention--educated Human Capital, which he documents. IMO, the ideological issue long in play with its roots in the Anti-Communist Crusade has combined with traditional Western hubris to blind Congress to the fallacy of its attempt to mount what it admits is a New Cold War that it can't possibly win."
Within the American mind is the memory of past resource abundance that thinks that still exists when it doesn't. The major resources that're dwindling are energy providers along with the lack of any infrastructure being available to exploit the last remaining region--Alaska's Arctic Shelf--along with the blindness to that need. The past year's $5 gas and $6 diesel was due to Big Oil's monopoly on pricing, but that level of pricing will become an irreversible reality sooner than many realize--Big Oil merely took advantage to get its profits when it could. And with next to no nuclear energy capability, the future looks dark in the energy arena.
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.
I guess on thing to consider is that humans can also be counted as cheap meat-robots, capable of considerable autonomous actions, but fed and produced cheaply (no rare minerals, no complex computer chips needed).
In that regard I think humans will still be used as a major part of any army since they're way cheaper than drones etc.; there's no shortage of humans able to carry weapons to assist the more expensive and more intelligent "terminators" of the future.
how about a field of microsilos shallowly dug into the ground, more like blowpipes, shooting intercontinental gun bullets powered by cheap nanoengines, that will be mass-produced thanks to AI-driven 3D-nanoprinting manufacturing? And with micro- or nano-chips installed enabling satellite-controlled trajectory with pinpoint accuracy in hitting a bullseye thousands of miles away
Nanotubes have been available for a over a decade by now, and take a look at the level of complexity in machining microchips ... nanochips will logically be next. No need for soldiers, tanks...armies. Everything will be strike warfare.
Perhaps developing the means/ technologies - whatever - to strike the politicians, generals and other decision makers and their progeny individually, would be the best anti-war strategy. Let those who salivate at the prospect of war know its price personally. As the French would have it; "pour encourager less autres"
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.
got any facts to back up your diatribe Tiny Tom?
Tay-Tay and facts mix the same as oil and water.
Ad hominems do not a rebuttal make
Thank you very much for the kind words
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.
Please share some more of your deep thoughts with us, "Thomas Taylor".
Propaganda runs deep within you.
Facts? lol!
And, I did respond to your propaganda with the response it deserves.
It sounds to me like you are doing a lot of "projection", projecting the failures of the West onto Russia. State Dept spends most of their time doing that as well as USA bozo politicians like Killary Clinton and Mafia Don Senile Joe, not to mention real winners like Lindsay Graham. If you actually dig beyond your throwaway lines you might learn the truth. Lets chat again here in 3-4 months and compare notes, shall we?
Unfortunately my country does not allow me to check whether Russians are being fed propaganda or not. If it's only lies and propaganda what are they afraid of?
The fact that the West is censoring and Russia not is all you need to know about who is really winning.
Nobody is buying Russia debt? That's because most of the West is barred from purchasing anything denominated in rubles. Except for a few of Wall Street and London's in-crowd.
Thomas, you dont happen to work for any intel or dc agencies do you? You sure do a great job of parroting their propaganda.
Doesnt it worry you that you are echoing all of the talking points from serial liars in dc?
"Russia has set itself back 20 years"
Good, people weren't as brainwashed 20 years ago. Fighting the US from 20 years ago would have been much more difficult than its current TikTok iteration, it had leaders with actual brains instead of memes.
better than the west flooding itself with 3rd worlders to keep its demographics up
lol, thats everyone's problem, US's main force projectors in Asia, Korea and Japan lead the way in that. Not even China or India can escape this factor. And neither has the West, despite its imports of black and brown people, they still need countless more. Assuming the ones they imported are useful in their machine, so far that hasn't been the case. But you keep dreaming, maybe the brown person changing your adult diaper in the future might just smother you in your sleep instead when he gets tired of your wrinkled ass.
Gun envy. Poor you.
The demographics problem is a globally widespread one, and in Ukraine its been catalyzed by 8 years of civil war.
Back in 2019 German TV did record dating shows about Germans visiting Kiev to meet Ukrainian women, for marriage, through some paid agency. It's kind of creepy how the narrator just comments on the situation ala "Due to war Ukraine has an oversupply of women".
By now the situation is much more dire, as Ukraine is by now in its like 8 round of mobilization, and after the Russian invasion millions of Ukrainians fled the country, nearly 3 million of them to Russia.
Granny Hawkins says:
“That big talk’s worth doodly squat”
Unless you got some links then put em’ up so everyone can share your enthusiasm (not)
Okay here’s some
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/russias-economic-future-semiconductors
Once its landlocked, the west will bail so fast. With the possible exception of whatever poland is eyeing to take back in the west.
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
it has no actual chip industry, Soviets tried to build one but didnt manage in time before old head stain and drunky took it down. They have some old larger nm, small quantity productions, but the rest is Chinese imports. One of Russia greatest failures is its abandoning self-reliance in favour of oligarchs stealing assets.
It seems they always have had a minor chip industry as you point out but rely on China. But they are better off than france, germany, spain, canada, italy etc as they have no chip industry at all and the few us names i clicked on are all in taiwan anyway
Take out the factory that builds the low nm machines and the entire west will suffer a chip shortage. This is the foolish part of globalization. Too many eggs in one basket. This war should have never happened.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Center_of_SPARC_Technologies
If you're interested, read this article where I covered that specific subject more in depth https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/russias-economic-future-semiconductors
Thank you
Perhaps Russia's chip industry is behind. I can't comment to that. But the Ukrainian and Russian engineers and techs that I have worked with in my career could perform board level repairs that I can't. Nor can most American engineers. We're rich. When a printed circuit board fails we order a new one. The Russians and Ukrainians fix them. If a capacitor pops or a resistor fries it's not an issue for them.
Thats interesting and not all that surprising. Decades of “subbing it out” will take it’s toll on the USA, in fact it already has. When Russia finally cuts them off from neon, titanium and various other goods there will be a mad scramble. But it may be that at that point the RoW and the Equatorial South in particular will have armed up sufficiently to repel a new wave of industrial colonialism. The chasm between Russian manufacturing aesthetics as compared to the USA and the West generally is huge. Ruggedly built, easy to use and repairable hardware will never go out of style and will continue to work in the most adverse conditions. In the case of EMPs and related countermeasure it might be good to have analog goods within arms reach.
I heard an observation, I believe from Jim Rickards, that 70% of the world's neon is made in Odessa. I was not aware of this. So that makes Odessa a very strategic city indeed. And I thought it was just a fun place to visit. It's interesting that my Missouri Congresscritter was very protective of the many US federal operations in Ukraine prior to the Russian SMO. I paid a personal visit to one of her local offices in 2021 to voice my displeasure at the amount of money going to Ukraine but I wasn't sure just how involved we were. Her staff's response certainly confirmed it. My guess is those ops were providing her a lot of campaign contributions.
Thats interesting. If that is the case then Odessa would be the sweetest plum
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.
You forget, control at a distance implies a control signal, which means radio spectrum, which can be jammed...easily.
Notice how very little video comes out of zones where Russia is using its full panoply of EW equipment? It's not coincidental... Simplicius even embedded a video where this was touched on a few posts back
Inverse square law favours the defence.
As with most things it will be a contest of countermeasures. Once ample countermeasures are applied it’s easy to get back to WW1 levels …
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
that's true, I was going to write a whole disclaimer (but thought better of it) that my usage of the term "AI" is a bit broader and more colloquial in the sense that I'm referring to all types of algorithmic 'smart' applications rather than the more narrow definition some people view AI as something approaching sentience and conversational/thinking ability like a ChatGTP or something like that. It was more for the sake of shorthand.
and thanks for link, hah, that's funny--so Serbs were always the kings of shooting down the undownable from the very beginning ;-)
> ... 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.
Very good info thanks. I also heard that he didn't rely as much on elite infantry as you stated above but prized elite cavalry more, for the same reason that he was the king of maneuver and speed and loved to use those 2 attributes to great effect while infantry served more of a pinning force IIRC
Yup he loved to split his forces, force march them on the enemy from several directions and compel him to accept battle at a disadvantage. Clearly hussars and dragoons played a major role in scouting, shadowing and harassing the enemy force, and mop up the stranded after the battle.
1864 hussars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4lq5LE_Kwg
Big Serge wrote on the topic of Napoleonic warfare in his excellent military history series. Like all his posts, it's informative and readable. Right up your alley: https://bigserge.substack.com/p/napoleons-art-of-warfare
Thank you, I'll check him out. Osprey is becoming expensive these days.
I've read hundreds of books on the Napoleonic Wars. I found Big Serge's analysis of the rise (and downfall) of Napoleon's methods of war the clearest I have come across.
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.
You can't put a Faraday cage around everything, and a theater-sized nuke at high altitude will pulse through even "hardened" electrics and electronics (particularly circuit boards). And the longer we used advanced weapons, the harder it will be to transition back to conventional martial combat methods. One million dollar nuke takes out billions of dollars of smart weapons and supporting equipment.
> 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.
Thanks, and you're right about those. However I viewed most of those instances more as outliers, and my attempt was to characterize more of the general totality / gestalt of the warfare typified by these particular eras I highlighted. So for instance, it's known that yes, during the Revolutionary War, Minute Men also were sometimes mobile and darting through the woods and using more 'modern tactics' at times, however to characterize the main bent of warfare during this era as such would be obviously wrong. Similarly, while the Napoleonic era did have skirmishers and phases of the combat where it was not so 'prim and pretty' as described, the combat in a general sense can still be described as being grounded in these types of described formations, rather than being closer to the 'chaotic trench warfare' end of the spectrum. While outliers did exist in almost every fashion, the Civil War, to me, marked a turning point at least insofar as American warfighting goes, from which there was "no turning back." Whereas the other examples may have had outliers but in general even AFTERwards, warfare of that era still reverted back to the tropisms of the day.
But still your details are invaluable, so I thank you.
I just felt we needed to give Napoleon his fair share: he is the most consequential military man ever, arguably the most brilliant general in history. He'd be known as Napoleon the Great, if "Napoleon" weren't a silly name compared to Alexander or Charles.
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.
You're right, and to some extent they already have it -- for instance Russia's Kh-101 cruise missile which has been the bread and butter of all the recent cruise missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, is said to have a EW jamming suite which has already seemingly been witnessed screwing with AFU air defenses. There were a few videos showing Kh-101's passing by towards Kiev, and the Ukrainian AD missiles flying right past it or strangely whizzing off in a random direction nearby as if they were suddenly 'spooked' by something electronic.
The smaller drones are too small to have such powerful suites simply because typically EW jamming is a byproduct of electrical power, i.e. the more power generated the more powerful the signal. And these huge cruise missiles with their turbine engines can generate enough power it seems to produce a strong counter signal, but small drones with their flimsy batteries can't do this. So it would likely take much larger drones to be able to produce strong enough jamming signals.
Thanks for your reply. The future battlefield issue I brought into the discussion about the coming Congressional attempt to launch the Anti-China New Cold War that b wrote about today at MoA. Here's what I wrote so you don't have to search for it:
"As noted by others on the Ukie thread, the current essay by Simplicius76, "The Changing Face Of War - Future of the Russian SMO", describes the real fear lurking behind current Congressional actions: The coming AI/Dorid/Drone weaponry that will emerge as an outcome of the struggle against Unipolarity of which the SMO is a part. Congress cannot undo what's already been done to drive China and Russia together along with the RoW, that latter bit it's ignoring to its peril. Furthermore, Congress completely ignores another vital fact--Outlaw US Empire geoeconomic dependence on China. A look at the trade ledger tells the story there as a huge percentage of real GDP is generated by that trade. Ouch! As a result, the fact that the Outlaw US Empire is actually facing a deficit in power versus China isn't being seen for the great negative it is. What Congress really needs to ask is this: Is trying to remain on top of the hill really a vital US interest or will the attempt merely accelerate the USA's decline?
"As b notes, the USA is facing serious deficits in key resources but there's no mention of the really important deficit carrying great weight that Simplicius does mention--educated Human Capital, which he documents. IMO, the ideological issue long in play with its roots in the Anti-Communist Crusade has combined with traditional Western hubris to blind Congress to the fallacy of its attempt to mount what it admits is a New Cold War that it can't possibly win."
Within the American mind is the memory of past resource abundance that thinks that still exists when it doesn't. The major resources that're dwindling are energy providers along with the lack of any infrastructure being available to exploit the last remaining region--Alaska's Arctic Shelf--along with the blindness to that need. The past year's $5 gas and $6 diesel was due to Big Oil's monopoly on pricing, but that level of pricing will become an irreversible reality sooner than many realize--Big Oil merely took advantage to get its profits when it could. And with next to no nuclear energy capability, the future looks dark in the energy arena.
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.
I guess on thing to consider is that humans can also be counted as cheap meat-robots, capable of considerable autonomous actions, but fed and produced cheaply (no rare minerals, no complex computer chips needed).
In that regard I think humans will still be used as a major part of any army since they're way cheaper than drones etc.; there's no shortage of humans able to carry weapons to assist the more expensive and more intelligent "terminators" of the future.
how about a field of microsilos shallowly dug into the ground, more like blowpipes, shooting intercontinental gun bullets powered by cheap nanoengines, that will be mass-produced thanks to AI-driven 3D-nanoprinting manufacturing? And with micro- or nano-chips installed enabling satellite-controlled trajectory with pinpoint accuracy in hitting a bullseye thousands of miles away
nano-tech is much further down the track than even fusion...and that's still 50 years away!
In my comment, I did not set the time frame!
Nanotubes have been available for a over a decade by now, and take a look at the level of complexity in machining microchips ... nanochips will logically be next. No need for soldiers, tanks...armies. Everything will be strike warfare.
Clearly, math, physics, chemistry and engineering were not a part of your studies.
I am a highly credentialed engineer
How are laser weapons coming along?
A pixel on a satellite is no better than 50mm.
Bullets cannot travel as far as cannon shells for good reasons of physics.
Satellites are highly vulnerable. They will go first in any full war.
One nuclear electromagnetic pulse can disable a continent the size of Australia.
Screens, not satellites, have pixels. The rest is just circumstantial.
How do you define an autocannon projectile? Is it a bullet or a shell?
In the real world things are blurred, cut and dry categories belong to the world of ideas.
Digital data transmitted by satellites are pixels when on a screen. 50mm is as good as it gets.
We all know the difference between a bullet and a shell.
Please stop nitpicking. If you have some serious information, please provide links.
I am speculating about the future of warfare, I am free to do it without "providing links", nor I do need your approval.
Perhaps developing the means/ technologies - whatever - to strike the politicians, generals and other decision makers and their progeny individually, would be the best anti-war strategy. Let those who salivate at the prospect of war know its price personally. As the French would have it; "pour encourager less autres"
Really imformative column like always. Thank you for your effort. PEACE.