Modern military technology seems to become too costly. Recent conflicts in the middle east seem to indicate that low-cost approaches can have some terribly effective successes against much more sophisticated militaries.
Asymetric warfare is very different from the near-peer conventional warfare we see in Ukraine.
One cannot occupy a region milotarily if a large enough portion of the local population is hell bent to oppose that accupation. That's what happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Ukraine is what happens ofnthe imvasion force is met by defenders capable of stopping the invasion. And the war in Ukraine cannot be fought with low tech weapons, heck, everything older than the Vietnam War won't cut it anymore.
Actually no, it is not what happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Vietnam there was constant foreign infiltration by the enemy and they used quite nasty "tactics" to gain local influence. Afghanistan is not much different. In principle the side that was more willing to instill more terror into local populace won.
The same problems of logistics also do apply to the local opposition. If you run out of weapons or ammunition then you are done. If your supply lines are cut then you are done. It is also the main reason why the two wars mentioned were lost - incapacity of political will to cut the enemy supply lines.
The best rebuttal I've heard to this line of thinking is: "Some say we lost Afghanistan because we weren't willing to be brutal enough. Well, the Russians were willing to be brutal enough, yet they also lost Afghanistan."
In both cases, Vietnam or Afghanistan, US won, until it lost its sight and pulled out, leaving everything on the shoulders of a demoralized and ill-equipped local governance. Now this was unfair fight because this replacement was not willing nor capable to project any actual force and they crumbled fast. This is what I was talking about. Afghanistan government resistance failed because they were terrified about the perspective of them losing in the fight and then receiving the wrath of Taliban. This perspective looked real enough for them after Taliban had broken the agreements and no US retaliation followed. Finally all of it spiraled into humiliating cowardly escape of the remaining US forces. US lost because their top of the command was irresolute coward who didn't understand the consequences of his policy, short term nor long term. One bombing raid against Taliban positions may have changed everything. Now we got war in Ukraine and greatly worsening situation in Middle East and Africa because the enemy understood very quickly what the US leader really is and took their changes. We are lucky that Taiwan was not lost and this is only thanks to the bravery of Ukrainians, but all of this is again on the edge because of the insurmountable stubbornness and stupidity of US politicians.
The US lost in Vietnam, in fact the Paris treaty came as close to unconditional surrender as it gets without using the term.
Same in Afghanistan, NATO lost hard after being slowly kicked out of the country.
In both cases, none of the US or NATO strategic goals were achieved, while almost all of the opposing sides were. If you think the US won in Vietnam, Iraq won the Gulf War (number two, in the 90s).
Yeah, same way Germany won two world wars. Until around the half way mark, then they lost. Or a soccer team wins a match by being ahead 2 - 0 at half time and then losing 2-3.
Nazi Germany won clear victories against Poland and France.
Had UK given up and signed a peace with Germany then it could have been possible that there wouldn't have been what we call WW2 today at all. Given what Germans planned to do then fortunately it didn't happen. We can thank stubbornness of Churchill for this. But Germany made it even worse - it declared war on United States.
But there were no treaties between Germany and Allies until Germany had unconditionally surrendered.
But my claim was a little different. I wrote that US didn't lose until it "lost its sight". I would argue that it was not understood what is US actually doing in Afghanistan and when you don't have any idea what you are doing then you can't win anything.
The Wehrmacht was stopped before Moscow by the Soviets before lend-lease supplies had any meaningful impact. And the Soviet would not have ended the war when the UK exited it. Which never was an option to begin with, a seperate peace with the western allies was one Hitler's many pipe dreams.
The victory against Poland was, in the end, meaningless with the failure of Barbarossa. As was the victory against France in the West, as soon as the war in Borth Africa was lost by the axis. There never was a path to Axis victory, and winning the first to rounds by points is meabingless if you get knocked out by round 6. Should be self-explanatory.
In hindsight yes, most of this is true, but it is not guaranteed that all of this would have happened.
Wehrmacht rapid advance was stopped, but it didn't yet mean pushing them out would have been possible without tremendous material support through lend lease, without what there wouldn't have been any adequate Red Army logistics and armor.
USSR was able to produce around 40 000 tanks and this force overwhelmed German armor capacity, but they were able build this much only considering that US provided 400 000 trucks, if it was not so, considerable amount of tank building capacity would have to had been shared to build trucks, but even then the steel to build tanks came from US. On top of this USSR got 14 000 planes and also rail wagons and engines.
If there was a pipe dream then it was Red Army countering Wehrmacht without US material support. Russians like to minuscule the importance of US support but it was substantial and most likely essential for their victory.
I don't think so why there is this underlying assumption that Russians were "brutal", but when USSR took their forces from Afghanistan, they actually left a secular regime there that has survived for a few years and actually significantly outlived the USSR itself.
Maybe it would hang around longer if USSR was intact and assisting.
USSR simply ran out of resources to continue the war. They would have happily continued if they could have been able to afford it. In the end the country had dire deficit of even basic everyday items including food. But similarly to the Vietnam war it was not able to "sell" the losses to their own people, especially on the occupied territories (Soviet Republics), where it was seen as another Russian expansionist invasion.
> especially on the occupied territories (Soviet Republics)
A majority of these republics were founded by the USSR by carving them out of RSFSR, without the regard of wishes of people who ended up split by these borders.
I guess its karma when USSR wanted to be the example of affirmative action socialist state ran by ethnic minorities, only to get framed for imperialism by the autonomous republics it has created.
I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing. I'm talking about Soviet Republics (SSR) post WW2 e.g. the occupied territories that were not in RSFSR.
These "autonomous" republics were anything but autonomous. They were autonomous within the very strict framework provided by Russia. Puppet states would be the closest description, but even then not fully accurate. On top of this there was no need for Russian help to "create" these fake republics. Nations were completely capable to create their own governance like was for example the case with Ukraine. All what Russians did was to use the cover of communism to continue their imperialist ambitions.
RSFSR contained ASSR (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics) and these had even less autonomy. Most of these nations should have also been given the opportunity to have statehood as they wanted.
If you were talking about ASSR before WW2 that were transformed into SSR then again, see the previous point.
I don't believe you have the full context and reading Wikipedia on the subject will yield a lot of surprises.
USSR got the following bits and pieces after WWII:
* Kaliningrad, added to RSFSR
* West Ukraine, added to Ukrainian SSR
* Some ex-Polish lands added to Belorussian SSR (Poland get even more of better, ex-German lands though)
* Baltic states
* Tuva.
Of these, perhaps three Baltic republics were not happy about Afghanistan (and everything else), but they were quite small.
The rest of stuff, such as UkrSSR, BelSSR, Caucasus and Central Asian SSRs, were carved out of RSFSR (Russia) in the 1920's by the USSR, after being part of Russian Empire for a century or more. Most of them did not exist as a separate state previously, especially in the assigned borders. Some briefly existed, often as anarchist or German puppet states, between 1917 and 1921.
USSR did indeed gain control of various Eastern European countries such as Poland or Romania, but they were not part of USSR so they did not have to fight in Afghanistan.
The rest of stuff about nations and statehood opportunity is frankly bullshit. These ASSRs were also carved by USSR out of Russia, and almost universally have 40% to 80% of Russian population within them - the only separatist opportunity they have is to be a particularly poor reissue of Bosnia. People are not stupid and they understand that.
Your comments come off similar to a slave owner bragging about how many slaves they got at various stages and complaining about how ungrateful those slaves were to you.
Completely forgetting the slave aspect that comes with murder, deportations, rape, lack of self determination or any other human rights.
russophobia in this case is merely the dislike to being invaded and murdered by russians.
The primary error in your reasoning is that you assume that I'm some kind of empowered slave holder. But that's not true.
In fact, all of my ancestors that I know of are peasants, some of them serfdom peasants, most of them surely the Soviet XX century selfdom "kolkhoz peasants".
So whatever the ethnic minorities there were in the Soviet Union and preceding Russian Empire, a) I don't owe them anything, b) I would suggest them to cry me a river, and c) I will be offended by any unfounded accusations towards Russians.
As I have shown two answers below, my opponent cannot get his facts straight and is proud of it.
Now, I don't know who are you and when you've checked your own privileges the last time. Maybe you had actual slave owners between your ancestors, and now spend time lecturing dumb Eastern Europeans how they should treat each other.
My ancestors were the literal serfs - what the heck do I need to be ashamed of?
Imagine a Russian-speaking dude in Ulyanovsk in 1985 bring told he should be ashamed of his treatment of another Russian-speaking dude in Kharkov. And on what account? The latter one has more opportunities, lives in slightly better climate and has slightly higher consumption standards. And that's all folks.
These discussions make no sense. Sticking to the facts do, though.
That dude in Kharkiv is now being actively murdered by russians. His opportunities are being destroyed by russians. You can’t disclaim responsibility if you don’t feel ashamed of it.
You also forget that at home he might speak some other language besides the empire mandated russian.
I think you're right in so far that the US never really wanted to do what it would take to convert the whole of Afghanistan to a friendly state, like say Japan after WWII.
Urbanization statistics for Afghanistan place them at something like 20-25% with most of the population being rural. So even if you occupy the cities and stay for a generation (19.9 year according to https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/mothers-mean-ag...), you haven't really won the war. The first source I found says that in 2017 about 50% of the population was still under Taliban control or where Taliban openly moved about.
The US were extremely willing to cut North Vietnamese supply lines, including illegal operations in neighbouring countries. The only thing not tried was flattening cities in the North by air (that approach didn't work in WW2 neither, so no big loss). True so, the South received billions in support from the US, including a full troop deployment for years. The North did the same from China and the USSR. Still, at the core, it was as much a conventional as it was an unconventional war. One the US lost. The Vietnamese did deploy a ton of cutting edge weapons so, from top notch fighter jets to air-to-air missiles.
And no, you do not win those kind of wars by brutality. People love to believe that, it just doesn't work that way.
I would disagree. The most US was willing to do was to cause some inconvenience. If US really wanted to stop Viet Cong infiltration then they should have built a proper demilitarized zone between Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
I think it is more complicated. Both sides are consuming huge quantities of cheap artillery, drones, SAM, anti-tank mines and vehicles. HIMARS and smart artillery shells can make up for differences in fire powers, but only up to a point. Better tanks and IFV increase crew survivability, but they still get taken out of combats by drones, artillery and mines.
I'm sure Ukraine air force would love long range AA missiles (to counter the Russian ones) and stealth planes to avoid SAM (but Russians are not using theirs, probably because they suck, but still...).
Artillery wasn't cheap in WW1 and it isn't cheap now. Dumb 155mm howitzer shells are ~$3k apiece. The cheapest SAMs (ex-Soviet MANPADs) are easily 20 times that.
Russian genocidal war against Ukraine is not yet settled and the weapons used there are in constant evolution. If anything it is the response of Israel to the 7th October genocide that shows that expensive weapon systems in the hands of competent military still triumph any low cost approaches.
I see that many downvoters don't like that the things are named properly by their intent - I take it as showing support to the genocide in both cases.
It still remains a fact that the genocidal war started by Russia has not yet been decided and both, attacking and defending sides are trying to figure out the weapon systems to accomplish their military goals and these weapon systems are going through rapid development and "field testing".
It also remains a fact that low tech weaponry used by the terrorist organizations in Gaza has had very limited effect against the well equipped and highly motivated IDF.
Conventional war with the intent to destroy a nation is still a genocide.
Terrorist attack with the intent to destroy as many members of a group as possible is still a genocide.
dang, when it comes to moderation then my intent is not to inflict a flamewar, but as I have pointed out, there is a group of people on HN who are actively supporting genocide against Ukrainians and Jews. We don't call Holocaust a German Jewish conflict for reason.
> What Russia does in Ukraine is a conventional war, not Genozid neither.
Scholars of genocide disagree with your assessment. Russian actions against Ukrainians, from massacres to kidnapping of children and burning Ukrainian books, not to mention declarations that Ukrainians don't exist at all, are obvious signs of genocial intent and genocide itself. https://newlinesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/English-Rep...
After all, why does Putin have so much trouble travelling internationally? Because the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for kidnapping of children, which he openly boasted about, apparently not understanding that rest of the world sees that as a form of genocide.
The only ones I've seen argue against calling Russian actions in Ukraine a genocide are those who sometimes accidentally use Russian phrases when writing in English, that is, the denial is emotional, not fact-based.
The rent seeking aspect of the any industrial complex is driven by manufactured consent, for politicians to pillage the public coffers they have access to, and so it's heavily overpriced - the price not driven by free market but by war profiteering.
In Elon Musk biography by Isaacson, Elon explains the importance to why he sued NASA on behalf of SpaceX - in regards to the $227 million sole-source contract NASA awarded to Kistler in 2004; the strength or weight of the importance here outweighed any personal-emotional feelings and relationships he had, he stuck to his guns of seeing the corruption and understanding the negative impact and unfairness to SpaceX - perhaps selfish in nature but if Elon's nature is for fairness and justice, long live Elon.
But yes, save blanket bombing a whole territory, guerilla warfare with necessity-survival will lead to the most creative possibilities.
> FPV drones can almost be crafted locally, though, using off the shelf components.
The COTS components are all made in China. That's why no Western military is planning to use them in wartime - that supply chain is depending on the good will of an adversary.
They're going to have a very hard time then. Your military has a small number of larger and way more expensive drones which require specialized training. Your adversary also has a large number of cheap Chinese drones and the expertise to use them is widespread. Guess who gets a grenade in their tank hatch and who gets their mortar fire corrected. They will be sitting ducks to FPV unless they have enough electronic warfare to reliably close the entirety of 200 km front.
On Ukrainian front both sides go as far as to install CCTV to watch their adversaries' movement while in their improvised bunker. These are also civilian systems which get delivered to the front by volunteers. Ukrainian war is notably BYOD. It helps that both sides figured out to pay good money to soldiers on the ground.
The US military has known this for a long time, it just chooses to bury its head in the sand and ignore it.
See e.g. MC02 where they lost to opfor with what was literally like a cheaply thrown together zerg rush, and then just reset the scenario for a do-over.
Ah, that one war game. Reality is more complicated than that, as all wars since WW2 have shown us.
I agree so, not all lessons from that particular wargame seem to have been learned. Calling what mounted to a quite brilliant, unconventional strategy a "cheaply thrown together zerg rush" is just blatantly wrong so.
MC02 had a lot of problems but calling it a zerg rush exposes your ignorance-- it was a very sophisticated and well-coordinated surprise attack. The people running the wargame rejected the outcome as a likely tactic to be used by the hypothetical adversary and guess what, they have been proven right, see: the war in iraq. The iraqi army completely failed to hold initiative against the coalition or organize coherent resistance nevermind launch a coordinated surprise attack ahead of the invasion.
The other aspect that is missed in criticisms of this particular wargame is the fact that there were specific doctrine elements that were to be tested-- now the claimed outcome of those can be debated, for instance the fact that opfor had many restrictions on how they were allowed to employ their anti air defenses-- but a wargame is NOT meant to be a giant game of paintball where when one side gets hit they just pack up and go home, that would be incredibly wasteful. In many cases you have formations planning and training for months to participate in the exercise. The purpose is testing out many different aspects of doctrine, and often times that involves 'ignoring' results of one part of the wargame.
Cheap as in material cost, not cheap as in subpar tactics. No doubt the Marine dude in charge of that was very good at strategy, but by definition he had less resources for the exercise do anything he did would have to be cheaply thrown together.
And a successful zerg rush kinda has to be well coordinated, with pretty tight timing, otherwise it doesn't work. It wasn't meant negatively. Maybe I've just watched way too much OGN StarCraft.
That's precisely why I'm calling it a zerg rush. It's cheaper units, en masse, defeating a technology and cost-wise much more expensive foe.
You make a good point about the reset though, it would be a waste of resources to not reset at that point.
Maybe there's some negative context I'm missing about the phrase zerg rush. I like zerg rushes, they're difficult to execute in high level competition, and there's comparatively fewer dominant zerg players (compared the one zerg bonjwa savior vs like alllll the terran from the heyday of sc1)
Some people generated there seem oddly familiar. Too bad, I am not good with remembering names or I would frequently go: "oh that is <xyz> from <abc.inc>. How did his/her picture end up here?"
