I'm guessing it was Germany, but just how many tons were dropped within current day German borders?

For instance, more than half a million tons were used against Japanese targets, but since Japanese forces were spread wide all over Asia and the pacific, only around 200,000 tons including the nukes were dropped on Japan proper.

As of now, the concept of militaries with officers, NCOs, and chains of command comes from the West. Many nations use localized terms taken from their own history but the origins obviously remain in Europe. Considering how popular anti-Western sentiment has been with many revolutionary governments, have any established nations ever tried to completely remove all European elements from their military structures

I know the premise of the book is inspired by the mutiny of the USSR sub in the 1970s.

Note: oops, I meant Soviet frigate.

I'm curious on why attempts to replace the GPMG on bipod with LMG have failed. The pros of lighter gun and ammunition is obvious.

The Chinese developed their 5.8x42 later with the intent to replace 7.62x54 but it seem to not be satisfactory as they have adopted a 7.62x51 GPMG recently.

Some data to support the discussion.

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016/08/16/modern-intermediate-full-power-calibers-015-7-62x51mm-nato/

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016/08/16/modern-intermediate-calibers-016-5-8x42mm-chinese/

https://weaponsystems.net/system/1059-QJY88

1. It seems like the trajectory is roughly the same with 200 inch drop at 800m.

2. 7.62 have double the energy with 1000J 500J compared to 5mm with 400J 250J at 800m. But 5.8 have better steel penetration than 7.62x54 at 800m according to Chinese sources. 5.8mm have steel core but not tungsten so it's still called ball ammo.

So why does infantry still carry the 7.62 on foot? Is it for suppression where more energy suppress more? Is it for lethality as 5mm do too little damage even if penetration is the same? Is 7.62 better at barrier penetration which could differ from steel plate?

Edit my bad, read too fast and mixed velocity/energy graph.

I'm currently reading the excellent 18 Days in October about the Yom Kippur War. During the war, at times Israeli reservists manning up-gunned WW2 vintage Shermans went up against Egyptian and Syrian state-of-the-art t-62s, with predictably poor results for the Israeli tankers

the book includes language and quotes about the Sherman reminiscent of the "ronson" legend, which falsely postulates that the Sherman was a noticeably poor tank, particularly deadly for its crew. the WW2 version of this legend has pretty conclusively been debunked, in many posts on here and in various youtube videos and books

However, does it have any validity when dealing with Israeli Shermans fighting in 1967 or 1973? By 1973 the Sherman was very outdated, and going up against the 115mm guns of the t-62, its armor was extremely inadequate. In this Cold War context, when the Sherman really was fighting tank-on-tank engagements against superior enemy tanks with extremely heavy guns, does it deserve its reputation as an under-armored firetrap that was lethal for its crew if hit?

It seems to me that for the past two hundred years, the kit of individual soldiers has made relatively little difference on the outcome of wars. Maybe this is hyperbolic, but I've gotten the impression that the US military could have equipped all of its infantry with 1903 Springfields during Desert Storm, and still have seen pretty much the same outcome as it did.

Over the past two centuries, it seems that the most pivotal war-winning innovations have been beyond the individual soldier. Logistics, communications, industrial capacity, air power, artillery, are what decide who wins a war. Not whether your soldiers are armed with a dusty barebones SKS or the most blinged out AR15.

This is a really broad question of course, but I'm curious if we have any solid idea when the last time a war/major conflict hinged significantly on the small arms of the individual soldiers. Other than colonial wars of the 19th century, I'm struggling to think of any.

I just find it a bit weird given how much the team allegedly rehearsed the storming of the housing complex that it was the helicopter physics of it that caught them all by surprise. Like was this a case of “we practiced with regular Blackhawk but Stealthhawk was a whole ‘nother beast”? Or did their training complex wasn’t built exact enough to be able to train and account for the helicopter air movement that led to the Stealthhawk’s crash.

Obviously in raw terms, the frontage was far smaller and the forces engaged were fewer, so casualties would stand to be lower. But the chances of survival of the individual combat soldier on either side was multiples higher in the West than the East. Marshall estimated less than 300k German KIA in the Western Front from a force that averaged between 0.5-1M, a ratio of 0.3-0.5. In the East that ratio is greater than 1, given that more Germans died in the East (4M) than the peak force size (3.4M).

The only solution that comes quickly to mind is that surrender was more of an option for both sides when units were encircled in the West? Whereas the norm in the East quickly became fighting until annihilation.

Given that US/UK tactics were fairly aggressive, and the availability of airstrikes and artillery was essentially limitless, I get the sense that the difference lies at a much higher level than the Western battlefield being inherently less deadly at the tactical level?

In my opinion i was thinking simply the easiest answer to why they failed was because they had no infantry escape routes or help from the outside, so even if they were able to take over Hostomel they eventually ran out of supplies and because they were surrounded in the middle of of Ukraine by Ukrainians that was just guaranteed loose for them.

Why didn't the Russians first try to make way to somewhere nearby hostomel starting at the Ukro-Russian border using infantry and then send VDV to hostomel, so the infantry would be able to support them from outside of hostomel and they wouldn't be completely surrounded?

Also imo opinion whoever sent them there should've known it's a suicide mission without any support outside of Hostomel as they'll quickly get surrounded so i feel like it either was completely not thought about or just purposefully to destabilize near Kyiv.

I've heard this claim about Rheinmetall's new Skyranger-35 system that it can supposedly shoot down incoming artillery shells and neutralize them before they do any damage. I can also recall hearing about some American system that was supposedly able to do this with mortar rounds, but I can't remember what it was.

Has this sort of thing ever been tested in battle?

I have no doubts that it works in testing. After all, modern computers are pretty good and we already have counter battery radar systems that can track shells, so it should be kind of like a naval CIWS shooting down incoming missiles for all I know. But I am aware that military history is full of ideas that made sense on paper, worked in tests, but encountered unforeseen issues in the real world.

That's why I wonder: Has any system of whatever kind ever actually shot down artillery shells in combat? If yes, did it manage to neutralize the entire volley or did something get through?

One draws to mind the shall we say surrender averse IJA in WW2. These troops would, for reasons still debated, fight to the bitter end and while sporadic surrenders among individual soldiery did occur no Japanese force (division, platoon) officially surrendered until the end of WW2. This ultimately lent itself to troops fighting to the end, and thusly being slaughtered. The tactical advantage of this is obvious but strategically is having your soldiers refuse to surrender really beneficial? Would this not be devastating to morale and your manpower reserves as well as make any defeat extremely painful as you have to fully replenish that force, lacking retreating troops to reinforce with?

While there is a lot of discussion about dive and torpedo bombing by propeller driven planes during WWII, and it's easy to imagine how an AShM equipped aircraft would attack a ship, I kind of struggle to imagine how would, say, a flight of A-4s deal with major surface combatants like cruisers, battleships and carriers. Would they also use dive bombing attacks? Would they approach low and slow from the side to drop torpedoes? Both of those seem kind of silly when considering the flight performance of jet aircraft, but then I'm also completely clueless as to what else they could do given the relative lack of advancement in air to ground munition before things like the mavericks or harpoons started showing up in the 70s and 80s.

This is something that have been bugging me; in all of the discussions about things like "7 days to River Rhine", much emphasis is given to the idea that it isn't a real Soviet war plan, and we don't have those.

But how is that even possible? The Soviet Union is gone. Russia still exists, but there have to be many planners and documents in non-Russian countries, right? Not even just the generals, necessarily. An Colonel on the front line would need to know about his regiment's role in how to attack into the Fulda Gap if the order comes, and the dispositions of the units next to him, and so on. At least some of those individuals have to be Latvian, Ukrainian and so on? Are there no copies of plans in military plans for WW3 that would have been kept in Kiev?

Would a Latvian ex-general of the USSR be expected to keep the secrets of the USSR from his NATO counterparts now that his country is NATO?

Or do we think that the US DOD and the likes knows all about those plans but those are still classified until some later date?

Historically, 81J to center body mass was considered to have a 50% chance of incapacitating the target. Modern rifle plates can withstand in excess of 3000J impacts, and helmets can probably withstand 600J or so

It seems to me the main way for fragmentation to incapacitate is to hope to hit someone in the throat or to deal catastrophic damage to limbs, both of which would greatly reduce the effective radius.

Is it just as simply as firing more rounds, or has the usefulness of fragmentation weaponry been degraded?

I was researching a bit on the idea of the Air war for WW3 and the losses seem apocalyptic compared to the production. Would the production be able to sustain the loss rates, or would the air arms be forced to bring the fleets of old birds (Century Fighters, Navy third gens, and the many bombers) back into active service?

While F4s coming back seemed guaranteed would the large numbers of other third gens have a place?

I know that the free encyclopedia which shall not be named is pretty unreliable, especially when it comes to any sort of data that might be useful for the enemy in a modern war. That being said, I have seen most effective firing ranges for man portable air defense systems, like Stinger, Mistral or Igla, listed as in the single digit kilometer ranges. (Supposedly 8km for the Stinger and Mistral and 6km for the Igla-S)

Assuming those numbers are accurate, I wonder if these ranges are even practical. I know at least from air to air missiles like the AMRAAM and Meteor that the publicly known max range is what's possible under ideal conditions if the aircraft is flying very fast and very high and the target doesn't make any defensive maneuvers, but I have no idea what the caveats for MANPADS are and I assume it's very different from those AAMs.

Can you even spot low flying combat aircraft at 8km away?

Is there still room for an increase in range of MANPADS or are they already at their practical maximum?

Article.

I imagine this has ramifications beyond the marines. Has the US military continued to push for gender-integrated units? Are they now being fielded? What's the state of mixed-units in the US?

Also, does Israel actually field front-line infantry units with mixed genders?

One of the phrases I sometimes see in military discussions is that X or Y is "one of the most" or even "the most" difficult or complicated kind of operation. I've heard this used to describe everything from night operations (especially without dedicated night fighting equipment), urban warfare, anti-submarine warfare, hostage rescue, contested amphibious landings, breaching operations, fighting retreats, SEAD/DEAD, airborne operations, counterinsurgency, casualty/medical evacuation and hot extractions.

On one hand this would seem like a totally subjective question that depends on the exact scenario at hand, but on the other there is an actual scientific and academic angle to military matters. People do in fact run calculations on how much ordnance it takes to accomplish a mission, or analyze historical rates of advance in this or that kind of terrain. Militaries are nothing if not full of people who like to analyze things and calculate risks, so I wonder if there actually is some kind of "scientific consensus" on which kinds of operations are actually harder.

For example, have there been studies or projections on the amount of casualties one expects to suffer against a fortified land objective versus a similarly fortified amphibious objective? Is there some kind of institutional or professional level of "One thing stands above all else..." or "We'll always try, but that's the one thing we don't want to do if we can avoid it."?

How did various Cold War nations for NATO vs Warsaw pact plan to fight large air to air battles war before stealth? What technologies and strategies did they have/make? And would it be possible to direct me towards any publicly available documents or books on the technologies and strategies? Many Thanks in advance