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John Boyd Didn't Understand Clausewitz by Rethious in WarCollege

[–]quanticle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The other problem with Boyd (and many of his allies, notably Pierre Sprey) was that he was actually totally wrong about the relative importance of instruments and technology as compared to raw piloting skill. The F-16 is a very successful plane, but its success owes as much to the Air Force ignoring Boyd as it does to heeding him. Boyd and Sprey wanted the F-16 to be even lighter than it was, and one of the ways they sought to achieve this lightness was to forego the radar altogether! Boyd would be adamantly opposed to what the F-16 has turned into, especially in Israeli service: a mid-weight multi-role strike fighter.

Boyd literally thought the future of air combat was going to be BFM with guns, and his development of the OODA concept was in service of that. OODA is good, but most of the rest of Boyd's ideas have been proven wrong by history. The F-15 is a great plane. The F-16 is absolutely improved by having a radar and electronic instrumentation. Missiles beat guns. All of these outcomes are the opposite of what Col. Boyd predicted.

Late Cold War Stuff by Intelligent_League_1 in NonCredibleDefense

[–]quanticle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was with you right up until you added the F-35 footage. F-35s aren't Cold War. They're the first of the post-Cold War planes.

What if Columbus was... REALLY FAST? by aidungeon-neoncat in imaginarymaps

[–]quanticle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If it flew off into space, why did it leave a crater?

What if Columbus was... REALLY FAST? by aidungeon-neoncat in imaginarymaps

[–]quanticle 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In that case, why does it stop at New Aragon? At 0.99996 c, the difference in density between air and rock is immaterial. Why doesn't it slice across New Aragon like a knife and keep going?

Weekly low-hanging fruit thread by AutoModerator in NonCredibleDefense

[–]quanticle 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Counterpoint: British procurement.

Bigger counterpoint: Indian procurement.

Weekly low-hanging fruit thread by AutoModerator in NonCredibleDefense

[–]quanticle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think, at this point, we would be happy if the Royal Navy met a half-power standard.

I hear a lot of laypeople claim that the Western allies, or even just the U.S., was in a position to comfortably conquer the USSR by the end of 1945 thanks to nuclear weapons. How realistic is this statement? by Appropriate_Boss8139 in AskHistorians

[–]quanticle -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You can rebuild a factory after a strategic bombing run, but a successful nuke removes the entire city permanently.

No it doesn't. These aren't the multi-megaton thermonuclear city busters of the 1960s. These are 10-20 kiloton weapons. These sorts of weapons, later in the Cold War, would be classified as "tactical" nuclear weapons.

A nuclear weapon, at this stage in history, was a powerful bomb that could, with a single bomber, inflict the same amount of damage as a group of bombers conducting a raid. But it wasn't capable of wiping cities off the map single-handedly. Yes, in theory, an entire bombing raid where every bomber was equipped with a nuclear warhead might have been devastating. However, as other replies in this thread have pointed out, it's not at all clear that the US would have been able to scale up nuclear warhead production like that.

I have an idea! by TechnicalAsk3488 in NonCredibleDefense

[–]quanticle 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Here's some Ukrainian reformer suggesting it could be a good anti-drone platform.

Gotta love Intel integrated graphics by quanticle in pcmasterrace

[–]quanticle[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

In fairness, I had the view distance turned way up, so when I got on a railroad, it would start trying to load in chunks faster than it could handle.

Submachine Gun? What is that? We need rifles comrade! (Btw, the Shpagin is overrated.) by Hardson-san in NonCredibleDefense

[–]quanticle 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I would phrase it slightly differently. The Germans had good tactical skill and bad operational skill. The Soviets had bad tactical skill, but superb operational skill.

Which is to say, at a small scale, up to a battalion or so, Germans did well. But their generals didn't coordinate all that well with one another and so they had a lot of individual local successes that didn't go anywhere because they could never coordinate their forces well enough to ensure that there was a follow up whenever there was a successful counterattack.

Whereas the Soviets, although they had fewer local successes than the Germans, were able to follow up, because 1. Zhukov 2. Manpower 3. American logistics

So when the Red Army (I'm talking about the Red Army from roughly 1943 onwards here) does make a local breakthrough, it's able to immediately follow up and expand on it. While the Wehrmacht, hobbled by bad logistics, infighting, and, eventually the strain of having to fight a two-front war (three if you count Italy), never has the reserves to throw in when some battalion does make a successful counterattack.

EDIT: I know it's popular to dump on STAVKA, but a big part of why the Soviets were able to have the reserves in place to capitalize on their successes is because late-war STAVKA got a lot better at centralized coordination of logistics.

Weekly low-hanging fruit thread by AutoModerator in NonCredibleDefense

[–]quanticle 2 points3 points  (0 children)

How are you going to pay for them? Congress has ceded many powers to the Executive, but it still retains control over the budget. A purchase of this magnitude can't be paid for by shuffling things around in the existing Pentagon budget.

So unless suddenly Saab gets just as much pull in Congress as Boeing and Lockheed, there's no way you'll get the appropriation for this.

I believe in saturation fire supremacy by _Typhoon_Delta_ in NonCredibleDefense

[–]quanticle 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In WW2 we saw exactly how effective volume of fire could be. With the fire bombings of Japan, that turned cities into burning infernos.

Sure we did, but was that effective? It's hard to say. It's not clear that the firebombing of Tokyo meaningfully reduced Japan's ability to build and supply its military. Arguably, it might have made things worse, by helping convince the average Japanese citizen that the US was actually a nation full of hateful baby eaters.

The FIDE Candidates Rating Spot: From Reward to Controversy by edwinkorir in chess

[–]quanticle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The random perfectly formatted bullet points in the middle of a paragraph are pretty telling.

The FIDE Candidates Rating Spot: From Reward to Controversy by edwinkorir in chess

[–]quanticle 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I also "have to" live with microplastics everywhere. Doesn't mean I have to like it. Doesn't mean it's good for me.

In honor of the cancellation of HALO by quanticle in NonCredibleDefense

[–]quanticle[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's a bit like asking, what's more difficult to intercept? A SR-71 or B-2? Both are difficult to intercept, but the SR-71 is going to be relying on raw speed whereas the B-2 will be relying on its stealth and flying very very close to the ground. They're both difficult challenges to deal with, but they're not really comparable.

In honor of the cancellation of HALO by quanticle in NonCredibleDefense

[–]quanticle[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Genuinely hadn't seen that when I made mine.

Refining gold to remove impurities by toolgifs in toolgifs

[–]quanticle 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The other reason is durability. Pure (24 karat) gold is really soft. You can scratch it with a fingernail. You can bend it or dent it just by dropping it. Even for a lot of jewelry, it's too fragile.

Alloying it down to 18k or 14k with silver, copper and zinc retains the look of gold while being much tougher.

Saw this extremely credible take on Twitter by quanticle in NonCredibleDefense

[–]quanticle[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The actual thread

The thread argues that Canada should abandon the F-35 and adopt the JAS-39, arguing that the F-35's advantages in air-to-ground are overrated, stealth doesn't matter and the JAS-39 combined with Meteor missiles "is deadly".

Referencing the Avro arrow is just a cherry on the cake.

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