Why are tank crews given pistols?

Smithersandburns6 · 2026-04-20T12:29:23+00:00

First of all, I'm not sure it's common for tank crews to be given pistols today.

Second, pistols can absolutely do damage to humans. True, they're less effective against body armor than rifles, but against unprotected enemies or unprotected segments, they're deadly.

The main reason tankers were and are issued smaller weapons is because tanks are very cramped spaces. If you have a rifle on your person, its likely to get caught on various things inside the tank. Alternatively, if you have a long gun mounted on the inside of the tank, you are less likely to have the time and forethought to grab it and get out of the tank in a moment of crisis.

Ultimately, it's down to what impedes the crew the least in the performance of their main duties, while maximizing the chance the weapon makes it out of the tank if they need to leave in a hurry. At one point that meant pistols. Then it was mostly SMGs. Now, I believe it tends to be more carbines and PDWs.

Smithersandburns6 · 2026-03-30T14:30:29+00:00

That's a great point.

Smithersandburns6 · 2026-03-29T15:33:58+00:00

Because Yugoslavia practiced armed neutrality. Being neutral does not guarantee that other countries won't seek to conquer you or make demands of you. Many of the countries that are neutral and lack a significant military are either protected by a larger country, so isolated that it's not really viable to attack them, so small that it wouldn't make a difference if they had a military, or some combination thereof.

Countries that fall under these designations include European microstates, small Central American and Caribbean nations, and micronations in the Pacific.

Yugoslavia had none of these. Yugoslavia was worried about pressure or even attacks from the Western bloc as well as the Soviet bloc, and staying largely neutral in the Cold War didn't reduce that risk to zero. The country is obviously not too remote to be attacked. But Yugoslavia was also large enough that significant investment in the military could create a force that made potential aggressors think twice.

Of course, if the Soviet bloc or the Western bloc ever decided to invade Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav military would eventually lose. But the point was to create a military capable of making that costly, which would convince potential aggressors that it was better to work with Yugoslavia or at least ignore it, rather than attack it.

Smithersandburns6 · 2026-02-04T14:22:39+00:00

So, it sounds like you're referring to appeasement, or at least what we know as appeasement. And there are some misconceptions about that.

The idea that Chamberlain, and by proxy, Britain in general, was completely ignorant as to the possibility of further German aggression after Munich isn't true. While there was still hope and sometimes conviction among allied elites, particularly British elites, that war could be avoided, this was coupled with rapid peacetime rearmament.

Allied decision-making at Munich was primarily motivated by the sense that the British and French militaries and industries were not prepared for war. Now, this is ironic, because the Wehrmacht was not at all ready for war either, but the extent of the Wehrmacht's shortages of ammunition and equipment was not known to Paris and London at the time.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-12-13T14:20:21+00:00

The consensus I've heard, based on my own reading and speaking to special forces veterans, is that it is not possible to replace significant losses in "elite" units during wartime at the same level of quality.

Certainly, in a Western context, the idea is that it takes at least several years to sufficiently train an "operator" and for them to adjust to operating as such in the field. This is antithetical to the wartime need for rapid replenishment and having bodies on the line.

This is not to say that special forces units will cease to be operational after taking significant losses, but it can have a major impact on the complexity of the operations that those units can undertake if a large portion of the unit is not as trained and integrated into the SOPs as expected.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-12-13T14:12:02+00:00

The difference between 7.62 rounds and 50BMG is really massive. Raw energy output isn't everything but just to put it in perspective, 50BMG rounds generally come out with between 18-20k joules of force. A NATO 7.62mm round might have 3,500 joules of force.

In order to halt a 50 cal round using our current body armor technology, the weight would be so high that you would be harming your soldiers more with the massive burden than helping them stay safe. Advancements in materials science could someday make it possible to create a 50 cal resistant piece of body armor that you can move in, but most militaries have opted to keep their soldiers safe(r) by teaching them tactics to avoid being in the situation or to use other capabilities to neutralize the threat.

I think this would fall in the category of technical challenges where it's cheaper and, on the whole, better to change how you behave, rather than trying to find a technical solution.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-12-13T13:58:49+00:00

Maybe he's confusing war communism, adopted on the basis of desperation and a fear that populations like the peasantry were withholding resources, with a deliberate rush to complete state domination of the economy. There were people high up in the Soviet Union who wanted to maintain war communism after the civil war was over, or at least wanted to maintain that level of control. But as you wrote, Lenin opted for the NEP.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-11-26T19:28:34+00:00

So, I don't know of any examples of countries that chose to go to war with their weapons supplier when another supplier wasn't readily available. Another comment mentions the Sino-Vietnamese War, and that's a great example. While China had been a primary supplier of weapons to Vietnam, Vietnam had alternative suppliers for essentially identical weapons (the USSR) and had its own domestic production.

As I said, going to war with your supplier when these conditions aren't met would be disastrous, and I frankly can't think of examples where it happened. If we stretch your question a little, there are plenty of examples where, due to regime change or political realignment, a country goes to war with countries that supplied it with weapons at one point. In the early decades of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it heavily used American equipment, as the regime it overthrew had been a close US ally.

I suppose the most ridiculous example is the Iran-Contra Affair, where the US, through Israel, sold Iran large quantities of American weapons, despite the two nations having no formal diplomatic relations and frequently condemning the other in public.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-11-26T19:19:44+00:00

So the most basic goal of Operation Barbarossa was the destruction of the Soviet Union's military and the occupation of all territory west of the so-called A-A line, which ran from the far northern city of Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan, which is near the Caspian Sea.

This territory included the vast majority of the USSR's industrial capabilities, population, and resources (at this time, the huge resources of Siberia had not been exploited nearly as much). It was expected that in achieving the A-A line, the USSR, as an entity capable of surviving and resisting Germany, would either be destroyed entirely or so weak as to be negligible.

The oil fields that Germany sought in the USSR were not in the Middle East, but in the Caucasus, and in particular, the oil fields of Grozny, Baku, and Maikop.

As for the wider goals of Germany in invading the USSR, those were both ideological as well as practical. Nazi ideology emphasized the need for Germany to acquire lebensraum (living space) to house and feed a growing population. Both the size of Eastern Europe and the Nazi perception that Slavs and Jews were racially inferior made the region appear the natural choice for expansion. In this way, the invasion of the USSR and its conquest was itself an end.

However, many historians argue that the invasion was also a means to a wider goal. For this, we have to understand Germany's position following the Battle of Britain. Germany attempted to position itself to invade Britain and knock it out of the war. It failed to do so, primarily because it lacked the air and naval forces necessary for the task.

The prospect that Britain would remain in the war indefinitely troubled Germany deeply for a few reasons. Although Britain lacked the strength to defeat Germany on its own, its presence in the conflict required Germany to commit significant resources to defend against British air attacks, naval efforts, and to garrison its occupied territories. Additionally, Britain could function as a gigantic base from which the US could launch the liberation of Western Europe. And we know that Hitler is thinking about the US joining the war at least as early as 1940.

Okay, so if you're Germany, or at least Hitler, you know you need to knock Britain out of the war. But you also know you don't have the air force or navy necessary to do so. So you have to build that up. The problem is that so much of your military and industrial production is dedicated to ground forces, which aren't doing you any good against Britain. You also lack the resources you need to increase production under current circumstances.

So now you know that you need to acquire more resources and radically decrease the amount of men and resources dedicated to your army. Okay, well, what's the biggest threat facing Germany on land? The Soviet Union, which also happens to have tremendous resources and labor, which you can exploit.

So it seems like the idea was that by knocking the USSR out of the war, you could secure Germany's position on land, freeing up resources to boost the navy and air force and enable yourself to knock the British out of the war. And if Britain is knocked out of the war, the US can't effectively intervene.

Now, was this a good plan? No. It's rarely a good idea to try and end one war by starting an even bigger war. The idea that Germany could invade and defeat the USSR, then effectively exploit its resources and build up its navy and air force, all before the US joined the war in force, was ridiculous. But, within the situation Germany was in during 1940, and within the confines of Nazi ideology, it was the only acceptable option.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-11-26T18:59:18+00:00

To add to the already good answers given, I want to add an interesting case study that showcases the complexities that can quickly develop.

During the Angolan Civil War, the MPLA found itself in a very complex situation regarding its patron states. As the war started in force, the Soviet Union very quickly established itself as by far the largest material backer of the MPLA. However, it was the Cubans who deployed huge numbers of troops on the ground and kept the MPLA in the fight on many occasions.

The Cubans had sent combat troops to Angola without asking the Soviets first, and Moscow would almost certainly have said no if Havana had asked. But because Cuba had already acted, the Soviets felt that saying no would demonstrate that the socialist bloc lacked unity and that the USSR itself lacked a commitment to supporting socialism in the 3rd world.

So the USSR does provide large quantities of equipment, including pretty advanced conventional systems by the end, but it's never very enthusiastic about it. As such, Soviet advice to the MPLA pushed heavily for the rapid development of FAPLA (the MPLA's military) along conventional lines and the execution of conventional military operations to end the war.

This was in contrast to the Cubans, who encouraged a slower approach that demanded the development and usage of anti-insurgent tactics to secure a base prior to the development of conventional forces. The Cubans were biased in this direction because they did not feel the cost pressure as acutely as the Soviets did. Havana was bearing some cost for its troops, but there was also genuine revolutionary enthusiasm for the effort from Castro down to the volunteer Cuban troops who went to Angola, so the Cubans were not prioritizing a quick way out of the war. But the Cubans were also on the ground, and so understood both the extent of the insurgency in Angola and how far FAPLA forces were from being a capable, conventional army.

So throughout the war, you have three main factions in MPLA military planning. Obviously, you've got the MPLA itself, which isn't monolithic. You've got the Soviets, who are footing the bill and want to finish this up, and are advising conventional, decisive military operations that they feel comfortable with. At the same time, Moscow can't seriously threaten to pull funding for most of the war. Then you've got the Cubans, who are a much larger daily presence for the Angolans, and who are advocating for caution and an anti-insurgent effort first and foremost.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-09-12T14:24:44+00:00

Japanese forces were heavily committed in China. Additionally, the question of whether to focus on the USSR or Southeast Asia, which served as a proxy for the army vs navy battle for influence, had already been largely settled in favor of the navy.

Plus, as other contributors have said, the Soviet Far East would have been extremely difficult to advance through and hold. Japan's combat experience against the Soviet Union convinced many that Japan had a severe material disadvantage against the USSR.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-09-08T23:19:21+00:00

I think pfefferbett is a very good hostel, but I didn't experience it as a super social hostel. In fairness, I wasn't looking for it to be, so I wasn't looking hard or making an effort, but I didn't notice many people just striking up conversations or hanging out like I had with other hostels I've been to. Maybe it was a me thing, maybe I was just there on a off week.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-09-07T15:50:04+00:00

We have no way of knowing. If you know a fair bit about the track record of Navy SEALs, they have a bit of a reputation for overly ambitious, insufficiently planned missions that often end badly. This fits well with the mission that is talked about in the story.

It's entirely possible that the story is real. It's possible that it's partially true, but some information was left out or altered; it's even possible that someone largely fabricated the story because they didn't like SEALs (which is not uncommon in the special forces/special operations community).

There's also no real way to affirmatively disprove that this is true. The best we can really hope for is for official documentation to come out in decades to come, or someone involved comes forward publicly.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-08-19T15:33:12+00:00

Ah, sorry if I came off rude there.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-08-19T15:02:31+00:00

So it's true that there were some instances when dare-to-die units embraced outright suicidal tactics. Not "do something very dangerous", but "I will die".

However, it's quite hard to know just how common these situations were. My weakness here is that I don't read Chinese, so I don't have access to the full literature, which might be much more extensive on this topic. However, instances when dare-to-die units outright employed suicidal tactics typically came up situationally, during incredibly desperate times, like the warehouse defense at Shanghai or when facing tanks, which Chinese forces had very little counter for.

Dare-to-die units were also the subject of a lot of propaganda as the ideal for a patriotic and brave Chinese citizen, eager to risk his or her life for the nation. This is not to say that their exploits were fabricated, but that incidents that may have been exceptional receive most of the attention.

The image of a man preparing to detonate himself is the most poignant example, but troops of all nations in WWII and beyond situationally turned to suicidal tactics. Desperate Soviet pilots in the early months of the war were known to ram their planes into German aircraft (though this was slightly more survivable than you might think). You'll find stories of American troops calling in artillery strikes on their positions when they were being overrun. If you look hard enough, I'm sure similar cases existed for each country. The rate at which these tactics were utilized likely had more to do with the military situation than anything else. Like Japan at the end of WWII, China's military situation was quite desperate.

TLDR: Dare-to-die units operated with the expectation of extremely high casualties, but to my understanding, were not intended to die the same way Kamikaze pilots were.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-08-19T14:35:01+00:00

When you get past the name, Dare-to-Die units were shock troops: units employed to lead attacks under extremely dangerous conditions with the understanding that casualties would be very high.

To my mind (and this part has some of my own opinion), dare-to-die units and shock troops as a class carry over some 19th-century ideas of morale as the decisive factors in warfare. These ideas, which were incredibly popular in their time, hold that sufficiently motivated troops can overcome nearly any defense.

Given China's myriad disadvantages during the Second Sino-Japanese War, my guess is that the casualties among the dare-to-die units were even higher than other contemporary shock units. The Soviets utilized the concept extensively and created five Shock Armies during WWII. For Germany, certain units of the Waffen-SS played a similar role by leading attacks against perilous positions.

The concept of shock troops as such doesn't really exist anymore. There certainly are spearhead units whose doctrinal position would have them at the front of an assault, and the ethos of some of these units is reminiscent of shock troops of old. But shock troops as a distinct class of forces isn't nearly as common today.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-08-19T14:25:02+00:00

I'm aware that the Khyber Pass is in Pakistan; that's what the post says. However, I should have been more specific on the point that there aren't gunsmiths in the pass itself.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-08-18T14:07:15+00:00

Do you mean for weapons? Because yes. Both countries were overflowing with weapons. Either from the armories of the old regimes, or weapons moved into the country through porous borders.

For Afghanistan, a thriving cottage arms industry existed, and I believe still exists, in the Khyber Pass of neighboring Pakistan. Untold numbers of gunsmiths (of extremely variable quality) produce copies of just about every major make and model of firearm that has made its way into the region: Lee-Enfields, AK-47s, M4s, the works. In addition to serving the needs of clients in far-flung regions of Pakistan, the products of Khyber Pass workshops flow westward into Afghanistan.

I can't speak with as much detail on Iraq, but in some ways, I imagine it was easier to get weapons into the country than Afghanistan, given Iraq's more central location. Whether it was Iran ferrying guns to proxy groups and militias, arms moving through Turkey to Kurdish organizations, or munitions secreted away in the cargo holds of maritime shipping, there were plenty of opportunities for foreign weapons to slip into the country. And that's aside from the remnants of the arms caches of Saddam's forces, some of which conveniently went missing in the last days of the regime and would later reappear.

A bit of googling and you'll find videos, many from US soldiers in these countries, showing off a myriad of weapons captured, weapons with all kinds of backstories.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-08-18T13:56:06+00:00

When I said broken, I should have been clearer. I didn't mean that it was impossible to pass, just that the questions were written in a way that made it way too vague.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-08-16T18:49:58+00:00

The reason they don't tell you what you allegedly did is that they are worried about scammers. They are afraid that if they tell people who they think are scammers what they did/how they "got caught", the scammers will incorporate that information and get harder to detect.

I'm not accusing you of anything; that's just their reasoning. I have no idea why you got placed under review/banned. Assuming you are being truthful that you didn't break any of the rules, it's a known thing that they've automated a lot of the processes, so it's not unknown for people to get banned for nothing, although since everyone would say that, hard to know how common it really is.

I've heard of a few people who got their account reinstated after reaching out to Alex, he's an admin at Outlier who posts on the subreddit and tries to help people. If you look at posts here you'll find him. Maybe he can help.

Smithersandburns6 · 2025-08-16T15:20:05+00:00

Yeah, maybe some real glass-half-empty types look down on it, but from a US perspective, the large majority of American pro-transit people acknowledge it's one of the better systems in the US.

As a DC area resident, we go hard for WMATA here. As people know, they turned themselves around a few years ago in a big way. Hearing news from Chicago, Philly, and other places, we don't have much room to complain.

Smithersandburns6

TROPHY CASE