[enzino]

One has to wonder how much of military "tech" is simply fake. Until its use is demonstrated in war (which i absolutely do not advocate, and is known to affected by propaganda as well), all the incentives from weapons' manufacturers and buyers are to exaggerate features and effectiveness. The main victim is the gullible public, who funds the military-industrial complex with taxes.

[bpodgursky]

Even if 90% of military tech is fake (and I think "fake" more usually means "we think it works, but turns out it doesn't"), the other 10% can completely tip the scales in a war, to disastrous effect (to the loser). History has a lot of examples of technology which seemed preposterous until it completely turned the tides of battles or wars (radar, tanks, mustard gas, atomic bombs...)

Drone warfare is pretty clearly in this camp. Not a lot of people followed the Armenia / Azerbaijan war last year, but Armenia was fighting a war from 10 years ago (trench + urban warfare), and they got slaughtered by armed drones. It was a wipeout.

Nobody wants to be the Armenians in the next war... and often that means wasting a lot of money figuring out what the next breakthrough is.

[remarkEon]

Yeah, I’ve been waiting for a full reading of last year’s Armenian/Azerbaijani conflict but haven’t seen anything that runs down the full event. Any links? Thus far I’ve found some YouTube or other video clips. Looking for a more technical exploration of how that tech was used.

[mNovak]

I recall The War Zone [1] having pretty good coverage of the tech component.

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone

[wikidani]

I believe there's a fairly comprehensive report on the Bayraktar TB2 and its use on this blog [oryxspioenkop.com]. You might want to check out popular front on instagram as well

[TooSmugToFail]

Great source, thanks!

[enzino]

your comment shows little knowledge of history. wars, historically, have been won by the parties with the strongest economy. that's even true for pre-historical conquests, as far as we know. ww2 was won by the midwest industrial base, and (mostly), the soviet's. check out the ussr industrial growth in the 30s. (they didn't have the fed wrecking havoc.) today there's no match for china, this is not even controversial. thankfully they're smart enough to understand that war doesn't make sense.

[remarkEon]

What.

The US spent 20 years fighting goat herders with AK-47s, and lost. The CCCP did the same and also lost, albeit they left actually left when they realized is was a mess (with a little help from CIA, sure). There are other obvious examples.

Economic might is a major determinant in how well you can prosecute a war but it is by no means the only thing that matters.

[enzino]

unless you live on the moon, it should be clear by now that the afghanistan occupation's main objective was to enrich contractors. the mission was accomplished.

[remarkEon]

I was there, so believe me I’m plenty familiar with the grift that went on. But your characterization of economic might Uber alles is not accurate, which was my point.

[enzino]

My objective is not to belittle the contribution of individuals in war efforts. Clearly wars are won by soldiers. But technology matters. Cement to make roads. Steel to make ak47s (which are much more valuable, per kilo of raw material, than drones). Coal to power it all. And so on.

[chii]

> 20 years fighting goat herders with AK-47s, and lost

they lost because they never really intended to win at all costs, like in WW2.

There's no doubt that the US can win any war currently. You can't even really call afganistan a real war, since the other side is so hopelessly outgunned that they resort to guerilla warfare. It is the same in the vietnam war - the US could've spent more nukes, more severe firepower and more man power - it's just politically infeasible to do so - the technology and capability is there.

[FromHoiPolloi]

The vast majority of wars have been won by the party with stronger economy. There are of course exceptions. Especially when the theater of operation is on the other side of the globe (i.e. 1776)

[s5300]

Mujahideen that turned into Taliban were literally trained by the CIA.

Calling them goat herders is either ignorance, racism, or pushing whatever agenda you're trying to push.

Unless you're specifically speaking of the lowest caliber grunts of their infantry, in which theirs are nearly the same as ours. Mostly uneducated cannon fodder.

But yes, the US completely intentionally drew out the 20 years of war to put money in the military industrial complexes pockets. The Taliban tried to surrender 2-3 months after we first attacked them IIRC, and we said no.

[remarkEon]

Unless those mujahideen were time travelers, no they were not the same taliban I was fighting when I was there. I’m well aware of the early history of how the Taliban developed as a CIA proxy war against Soviet Union. It had little to do with who we were fighting when we were actually there. It’s a Reddit-tier reductionist reading of history to laugh it off as “you were fighting the people CIA trained”.

>Calling them goat herders is either ignorance, racism, or pushing whatever agenda you’re trying to push.

I’m accurately describing the people I personally fought in this war. Good to know it’s racist to accurately describe them.

> Unless you're specifically speaking of the lowest caliber grunts of their infantry, in which theirs are nearly the same as ours. Mostly uneducated canon fodder.

I actually laughed out loud at this.

[s5300]

I wasn't trying to imply that anybody fighting post 2000 or even earlier is fighting the people the CIA trained.

I'm saying that today's Taliban receive training by yesterday's Taliban/whatever tribal spinoffs came from that who were trained by the CIA.

Is that anything like the direct US Military/CIA training? No, but the tribal knowledge of what was learned doesn't just disappear, it gets passed down.

Do you think it wasn't at all passed down? I too have more than one friend in the marines that went on multiple deployments mid 2000's-2010's. They seem to think it's a fairly reasonable argument.

I see no point in the goat herders comment. We don't refer to our basic infantry as former "factory laborers", "retail workers", "hamburger flippers", or "highschool dropouts" - all occupations I've seen go into the army, and end up as actively deployed infantry.

I don't know though. If you want to say the hamburger flippers got blown up by the goat herders IED, feel free.

[enzino]

One could think of rural hipsters with goats in america. I think characterizing Afghans as poor fighters was part of the propaganda push. "They're so weak, no way we'll lose." Turns out those goat herders have successfully expelled invaders since recorded history.

[ARandomerDude]

> I think characterizing Afghans as poor fighters was part of the propaganda push.

Dude I was there, on the ground, house to house and village to village. These guys were laughably incompetent as a fighting force. They were hungry, dirty, poorly trained and equipped, couldn't shoot, and often killed themselves or their buddies unintentionally.

We lost because of political factors, especially within the higher echelons of the military command structure. We had the tactical victories in spades but our leadership (military and political) could not translate tactical dominance into strategic momentum.

[throwaway210222]

> The Taliban tried to surrender 2-3 months after we first attacked them IIRC, and we said no.

The problem with fighting people who may have wronged you but have not seized any of your territories, yet whose values and principles are far from your own is that you can only accept unconditional surrender.

Otherwise, why fight.

[User23]

The US “cannon fodder” comes from the most advanced civilian gun culture in the world. To this day the US federal government actively supports civilian marksmanship.

It was entertaining seeing how the CIA taught the 2021 Taliban proper trigger discipline compared to the fingers resting on the trigger of a machine gun photos of the early 2000s. Shades of Kipling there.

[s5300]

Do you know what the Army Commendation medal is? To my knowledge, it's mostly something that is given after your first deployment/duty, fairly common but you have to have done something meaningful.

A friend of mine got his commendation medal in what I believe was Basic training (and this was just national guard), or training slightly after basic. This, from his understanding at the time, was fairly uncommon/unheard of.

Why he received the medal? He was the singular person in his platoon/training regiment that shot a perfect score/sheet in their rifle marksman class. For some reason, very few others came even close to perfect, most more towards the (lol) average of what was required, or worse than that.

He got a lot of questions from his peers as to what he was doing differently to have so seemingly easily scored perfectly. He said he wasn't really sure... asked "did you zero your rifles?"

By his account, he was quite literally the singular person, of a group of people all having military training and fucking around with firearms and live ammunition, that read the actual manual, instructions, and properly zeroed his rifle.

So, while you may perceive "comes from the most advanced civilian gun culture in the world" to be true, I somewhat disagree on its merits and propose that if the Taliban infantry are indeed goat herders, they may have more hands on experience in properly using firearms, as animal husbandry in areas like Afghanistan has some livestock preditors they must be wary about. That and the whole growing up in a completely unstable place constantly in some form of war/conflict.

I have however heard reports from the tales of General Butt Naked & Co, that down in West Africa and such, that the child soldiers know nothing other than the idea of "big number equal good"

And so, they set the windage sights on their AK's to the highest number, and end up shooting completely over the heads of people 20 feet from them. Perhaps these are the types you're thinking of when you say Afghani goat herder? No, you may be thinking of African child soldiers.

[FromHoiPolloi]

The USSR was perfectly capable of wrecking havoc on itself without the fed. While the Soviet evacuation of it's industry to the east was impressive one must not forget the massive aid the USSR received from the western allies.

[enzino]

You mean those "allies" who signed a non-aggression pact with them and then proceeded to discharge on them the largest amount of explosive material ever in the history of warfare? (Sadly that record held for only a few months.) Because those guys were well funded by the Western banksters.

[FromHoiPolloi]

No. I mean the support USSR received from USA after the German attack. A third of trucks used by the Red Army where US made A third of soviet airforce was US made. US also sent a lot of high octane fuel needed for the airplanes. A significant amount of food.

It is very likely that the USSR would not win if not for the US material support.

[FromHoiPolloi]

Also... why would USSR and Germany need a non-aggression pact when they did not share any border?

[roenxi]

> wars, historically, have been won by the parties with the strongest economy.

That isn't in conflict with what bpodgursky said - the country with the larger economy can iterate through technologies more quickly. If their opponents come up with an idea, a highly productive nation can copy and mass produce it. If they come up with an idea, their opponents may not have the industrial base to replicate it.

Although I do agree that based on the economy heuristic I'd expect China to do really well in any war. They're probably going to be better at drones than their opponents in a sustained conflict and it looks like drones win wars right now.

[enzino]

They don't need to engage in traditional warfare. It's enough to bring their products near their enemy and ask for payment in exchange for them. You know, what merchants do. The enemy is stubborn and insists in "paying" them with fake monopoly money, they are stubborn and don't discharge their merchandise. The people in the enemy country as so accustomed to high-quality cheap products that they want them more than a corrupt government, and would gladly rise against it if, say, their traditional Christmas presents are at risk.

[wolverine876]

It serves another purpose: Deterring potential enemies and giving confidence to allies. For example, the US has contributed to international peace East Asia for generations in part by having underlying muscle available. And today, if the US military tech was removed, I have a hard time imagining that alliances with Japan, S Korea, and others, not to mention Taiwan's freedom, would survive.

[pasabagi]

Wait, what? Did you miss the bit where they bombed North Korea until they had killed about one fifth of the population, and destroyed basically every form of standing shelter? Or the war in Vietnam? Or the support for South Korean dictators, even as they murdered their own people?

If that's a contribution to international peace, I hate to imagine what you'd think was a contribution to regional instability.

Even on a modern level, I think it's arguable that the 90's gulf war, and then the 2000's one, were the drivers behind a massive up-arming amongst states around the world that saw themselves as on the US's potential 'regime change' hitlist. It's often touted as a reason for China's massive arms buildup, for example.

[shepherdjerred]

The US has done plenty of terrible things. It’s impossible to be certain of how much of the relative peace we have today is because of the United States.

Overall I’d say it’s probably done more good than harm.

[pasabagi]

You have to sort of narrow down 'today', though - in europe, you can argue US influence was a source of peace in the post-war era. In east asia, the post-war era was actually extremely bloody.

I think the one thing east asian states tend to have in spades is pragmatism. The US, on the other hand, is very often engaging in the region for ideological reasons. For that reason, it has tended to engage in bloody, somewhat pointless wars that have often span out into civil wars in neighboring states (Cambodia, for example) or produced traumatized, basketcase states (North Korea, for example, or pre-revolution South Korea).

[codr7]

War is peace?

[kqr]

No. The threat of war looming over 40 something countries for 60 years has kept them from going to war with each other, at the cost of having to go to war in a handful of countries for some years.

The country-years of war in the region between 1950 and 2010 could potentially have been in the order of 1000s, but has been in the low 100s.

I'm not saying US threat of war did actually prevent a lot of smaller wars in the region to occur.

I'm also not saying if it did, that it was a good thing. (Maybe like with forest fires, many small wars are better than a few big ones.)

But that's the argument used by people favouring this US threat of war.

[wolverine876]

> The threat of war looming over 40 something countries for 60 years has kept them from going to war with each other

It's more the promise of security. War comes from insecurity (or for a few among non-democratic countries, the desire to take something from someone). The US security guarantee for Japan, S Korea, etc. meant that they could act with security.

[shepherdjerred]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana

[anonporridge]

I think that's partially why the United States is perpetually in some kind of war.

If you're the global superpower with an empire built on military might, you have to constantly practice your craft, and nothing beats the real thing.

And putting your capabilities on public display in a real theatre provides the entire world with the proof of violence (PoV) you are able to summon.

[ArtWomb]

Arthur C. Clark's "Superiority" comes to mind ;)

[throw3849]

Most countries have real safety concerns and their weapons are VERY effective.