The Old Hack

I started to think about some military matters that I feel do not belong in the politics thread and am therefore creating a new thread for it. Recently I started to think about the use of conscripted troops versus volunteers, training and equipment (or absence thereof), and situations they are deployed in. (Disclaimer: I myself was a volunteer and I personally find the use of conscripts highly problematic. Still, I can see that there are times where grim necessity may compel their use.) All else being equal, volunteers tend to be superior to conscripts. But there are situations where conscripts may function quite serviceably. This happens if: They are well motivated, for example if deployed in defence of their homeland. They receive a decent amount of training. They receive equipment and munitions that are if not necessarily modern at least capable of keeping up. They are not used beyond what may be reasonably expected of them. (Holding a pre-prepared defensive line is good. Frontal assaults, not so much.) This is all of course subject to change. Conscripts may also battle harden, for example, and as time passes, they may gain in capabilities and receive better training. And taking time to build their morale is never a bad idea. Unfortunately not all leaders have the foresight to use conscripts in such a way. In a certain war I do not think I need to name one side has found itself being driven out from areas it seized in the opening months of the conflict. It has suffered painful losses in equipment and experienced troops and the morale of its troops is... not good. The Great Leader of this side has determined that the correct response is to engage in, shall we say, a leveé en masse, in which a large number of civilians is conscripted into fighting. Few of these have had any active military experience for years, some of them have never been trained. They are being shipped to the front line in a haphazard way, their organization is poor, they have a desperate shortage of NCOs and what equipment they do have available is old if not obsolescent. (I must point out that 'obsolescent' is not quite the same as 'obsolete.' An aging bolt rifle might fairly be considered obsolescent. A muzzle-loading smoothbore musket? Probably obsolete.) The scenario they are headed for is not a happy one. They are facing a smaller but much better motivated and trained army largely consisting of volunteers, one with half a year of battle hardening to bolster it. Its leadership is superior and they are riding high on a wave of recent victories. They are pushing their opposition back and have momentum on their side. I am having trouble seeing any scenario in which the conscript forces, large numbers notwithstanding, is headed for anything but disaster. If their leaders do have the foresight to have them prepare a defensive line and attempt to hold it, that might help. Some. I can see only two hopes for these hapless conscripts. One, the weather might provide it with some cover; autumn rains might turn the fighting zone into a morass of mud and temporarily slow or halt fighting. This might buy them time to train and get at least some improved weaponry. Two, there could be agreement on an armistice or a peace. The latter is hard to see happening but I do not wish to rule it out. I'm interested in hearing the opinions of other posters, if you can either spot any mistakes I have made or if you can add anything. Discussion of different scenarios in which conscripts are employed would be very welcome. Lastly, this is a general thread for discussion of matters military, be they real life, speculative fiction, wargames and computer games. Go nuts. Humor is also welcome. Thank you all for your attention. ~tOH.

The Moderator: By popular request, I am relaunching the political discussion thread. Once again, however, I must stress that it will be very strictly monitored. Adherence to the forum courtesy rules will be enforced with especial care here. This is a particularly contentious topic and no flames, personal attacks, scandalmongering nor slurs of any kind will be permitted. People have a great range of opinions and while it is hard to remain calm and civil at times we should nevertheless strive for that to the best of our ability. Use of particularly offensive terms about other posters (including but not limited to 'RWNJ', 'SJW', 'Nazi' and others) will result in immediate warning points. We had some good and beneficial discussions on the old thread and largely managed to remain civil and respectful. I hope we can accomplish the same here. Remember: do not post here in the heat of anger and always keep in mind that your fellow posters are people, too. Last point: as in the old thread, when I do post here it will be in my capacity as moderator only. It will be easier for me to moderate here if I do not allow myself to become personally involved. While I do have a political bias, I will do my best to not let it affect me. And remember that as always, you have a right of appeal to the admins if I make a decision you disagree so much with that you find it unacceptable. The Old Hack

Well yes but they have been doing that for decades now without actually bringing the US close to socialism so it isn't really comparable.

I feel very tired. Trans visibility day always falls on March 31. Easter happened to fall on March 31. Certain Republican douchevolcanoes decided to pretend to be angered by this and demanded an apology from trans people in a blatant attempt to stir up outrage among their voters. This is offensive in so many ways. Just to mention a few: 1) They are demanding that trans people apologize for existing. They know perfectly well we won't and plan to use our refusal to further outrage their befuddled and frightened voters. 2) Their pretense that it is somehow the responsibility of trans people that a holiday that falls on a different day EVERY YEAR happens to coincide with an unrelated holiday this year. 3) Their use of a holiday meant to honour a man who preached tolerance and acceptance as a tool to further promote hatred and intolerance. 4) Their assumption that their voters are so blisteringly dim-witted so as not to know how calendars work. 5) The possibility that a number of them actually are that dim offends me personally. Sigh.

Currently their stance seems to be that anyone who is not an outright authoritarian fascist is lurching uncontrollably to the left.

To be fair to the shooting from the hip thing, perhaps the shooter though they might as well because the sight was so awful.

Thank you!

We could be immortal, immortal just not for long, for long...

"Project X" sounds kinda like something Elon Musk would come up with so yeah. How about something less impenetrable like "Fire At Will"? (I never did get why so many people seem to hate poor Will.)

Well, from a certain point of view it is. For example, traditionally when you negotiate with Nazis you do it with, say, thirty-ought-sixes fired from an M1. (You are allowed to upgrade to more modern negotiation methods today, of course.) By the time they are finally tired of that you can move on to negotiate their surrender with words. (Give up or we go back to previous methods.) I loved the 'Edwardian' joke in the comments. Possibly because I am like that myself. I have a friend named Elizabeth whom I once cited as the ideal source with whom to consult about Elizabethan English.

So Russia just withdrew its Black Sea fleet from Sevastopol. Think about that for a moment. A much smaller nation with no navy of its own just forced Russia to move its navy back to a safer port in Russia proper. What an amazing feat. https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-withdraws-black-sea-fleet-vessels-from-crimea-base-after-ukrainian-attacks-51d6d4f5

Oh yeah, like Brock Turner. Oh wait, he was a solid American Christian white boy of a good family. My bad, no reason to mention HIM. I mean if we started to consider people like him worthy of note they might never be able to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Obviously, but it also depends at least a little on the hosts treating their guests properly. I daresay stuffing them into ghettos, treating them like trash and not giving them decent schooling might be factors that could aggravate teenagers and make them more likely to act out even to the point of serious crimes. Once while I was riding a bus I witnessed an immigrant innocently approach two Danish girls who told him off. He then left them alone. They, on the other hand, spent the next ten minutes swearing at him, cursing him and insulting him. I tried to soothe him down but finally he had had enough and attacked them. I and another passenger tried to intervene but at that point he broke off and threw a beer bottle at them and fled. I know exactly what the headlines would have read if the tabloids had gotten hold of that one. "DRUNKEN <slur> ATTACKS DANISH GIRLS WITHOUT PROVOCATION." As an aside, I told the driver of the bus to call the police (this was pre cell phone days) but he was himself an immigrant and he was afraid to call the cops. I told him that I would take responsibility for the situation and speak to the cops and then he finally called them. That whole experience spoke volumes of what a minefield immigrants have to navigate here in happy little Denmark. Yeah, you need to show good manners when you are a guest, but it really makes it a lot easier to behave nicely if your host doesn't treat you like trash. With all due respect to laws and customs, I am a lot less motivated to follow them if in doing so I am likely to become a Darwinian example. Oh, that was never in question as far as I am concerned. All I was saying was that if they had had their way my family would shortly after had been en route to a fun little holiday camp and I myself would never have been born. Which was my whole point. Meh, I am unworried. The people doing that are in no risk of being out of work. Still lots of genocidal fascists running around murdering queers Jews illegal immigrants whatever flavour of people they have been told not to like. Once WW2 is finally left so far behind that it is no longer practical to track down its offenders, there will be plenty of new material to work on.

"War is a failure of politics." -- Some American Guy

"All warfare is based on deception, so that tracks." -- Some Chinese Guy, Misquoted

Discussion moved here from military thread: My apologies. I allowed anger to goad me into sarcasm and lack of clarity. Two strikes against me; I will try to avoid a third. I am sorry. I was talking about Denmark in early October, 1943. My family was in hiding, having only a few hours before learned that the Nazis were moving en masse to arrest all Danish Jews and move them to internment camps in Germany or eastern Europe. My grandfather was at the time quite ill and unable to reliably make major decisions and my grandmother decided that the family had to flee to Sweden. After barely dodging Nazi patrols on the eastern coast of Zealand they managed to cross the Sound in a leaky rowboat that almost sank before making it. And here, unfortunately, we arrive at the crux of the matter. My grandmother had no way of knowing whether the Swedes would actually welcome her family or not. She was caught in the refugee's dilemma: flee from horrible danger to an uncertain future. No, it would be the decisions of Swedish politicians and officials whether her family would be welcomed as deserving refugees or arrested and rejected as 'illegal immigrants.' As already mentioned there was a sizable faction in Sweden that wanted to refuse Jews admittance to the country whether for reasons financial or out of fear of offending the Nazis. My grandmother could have done everything right and still faced expulsion on arrival. The difference between a refugee and an illegal immigrant is out of the hands of the people fleeing. They cannot be certain of their welcome or absence thereof. The only surety they have is that their home is no longer safe or even survivable in some cases. They then leave everything they know behind bringing only what they can carry. They go elsewhere in the hopes that they will find better in the end. That these hopes are all too often dashed is hardly anything to blame them for. Using such language as 'illegal immigrants' and them being 'rewarded' for a 'crime' they had no idea they could even be committing is loaded language, and to be frank, it made me lose my temper. It is common propaganda to dehumanize these people as 'being too lazy to work' and also somehow 'coming here to steal our jobs' (I am not sure how these two work together. The logic escapes me, I fear.) Especially since what distinguishes the 'illegal immigrant' from the refugee is an all too often purely arbitrary distinction applied by politicians based on whether they come from 'shithole countries' or are Jewish or of the wrong skin colour/religion. I feel that naming someone 'an illegal immigrant' and then punish them for having this definition applied to them might not be very just.

Following up on this in politics thread.

The same thing occurred to me. Thank you for pointing this out.

You mean my grandparents could just have gone to a presumably Nazi-controlled immigration office and asked for permission to legally flee to Sweden, awaiting an answer? I wish they had known that. They could have avoided fleeing across the Sound in a leaky rowboat that almost sank before they reached Sweden. It is also worth mentioning that there was serious discussion in Sweden as to whether allow Danish Jews to claim refugee status, by the way. A sizable political faction wanted to deny them that. After all helping them cost money so it would be cheaper just to shove them aboard a boat and sail them back to Denmark where the Nazis would give them a nice camp for housing. If that faction had won, my grandparents and father would have arrived illegally and then it would be RUDE of them to try and stay.

On the plus side I am a child of such immigrants to Denmark, and I actually did manage to pass the test. (I was curious so I tried it.) Maybe that is why the Danish People's Party are so scared of people like me. They know I am a better Dane than them just a generation or two after arriving here.

That puts you miles ahead of a great many other Republicans. Yes, how horrible, offering people a safe place to live when they could just stay home and be killed instead. Speaking as a child of a refugee family, you will not garner much sympathy from me with that argument. After all, my grandfather and grandmother could just have stayed in Denmark and be sent to the concentration camps instead of illegally going to Sweden.

Well I live enclosed by walls. I use them to keep wind and weather out. Anyway, can you cite figures for how much good Trump's wall fragments have done?

These tests are typically used to raise artificial barriers against allowing immigrants to become citizens. Here in Denmark the Danish People's Party helped to institute a test so stringent that only about a third of all native born Danes could pass it.

It looks nice from orbit, mind you.

Building a wall to solve a territorial migratory issue is a strategy. It just happens to be one that is centuries out of date. Also even when they worked, walls needed to be manned with well-equipped and trained soldiers. But that would cost money so Trump never even considered it. This is why Nancy Pelosi suggested a beaded curtain as an alternative; it would be cheaper, prettier and hardly any less effective.

I have to admit, that would have scared the shit out of me if I had been a defender on a castle wall a dozen or so centuries ago. Imagine a siege tower approaching at like 20 mph. I admit I am less sure how much good it will do in an age where principal defences consist of stuff like minefields, defensive artillery and high power automatic weaponry, and walls are at best just an afterthought. Please. Russians are more modern than that. They would do a big empty wooden T-34. Well the problem is that once again the Trojan Horse was a vehicle for getting past walls. The real value of the soldiers inside was that they could open the gates for the rest of the Greek armies. In order for a Russian Horse/T-34 to be applicable, the Russians would first have to successfully construct a huge wall that could actually keep Ukrainians out, and good luck with that. Mind you I would not like to guarantee that the current Russian leadership isn't considering the idea. I mean building a big wall is what Trump's strategy was, so there is a modern precedent.