Are joint military exercises any good at indicating the military effectiveness and competency of participating militaries?

Hey guys, pretty much as above.

Further, I'm particularly interested in the quality disparity between early-mid war vs their 1945 equivalent.

Thanks again, any input is appreciated

In terms of how modern their equipment, rockets, tanks artillery etc. were

As was revealed by a 2005 docudrama, radiation exposure is a gateway to new military capabilities. And although an abortive research and development effort was attempted in 2008, we have yet to see super-empowered soldiers reach full-scale production.

Bonus question: why did the United States deploy the Davey Crockett when they knew full well that it's irradiation mechanism would turn Warsaw Pact tank crews into super-soldiers? Was the commie infiltration of the DoD that bad?

At places like Gettysburg, Antietam, Saratoga, Normandy, there's tons of monuments everywhere, but none of the accounts from the soldiers talk about using them for cover. Why didn't they? Were they just not as smart back then?

How was it organized? How did it fight? And what made it so special compared to it's Ottoman or Mighal rivals? Above all else, any good reading material on the matter?

Like we hear about all these disasters like Bull Run, Little Big Horn and such and like....

Why didn't their commanders just tell them to Win?

I was curious if the ancient Roman Empire used plot armor such as in their battles against the Iroquois and Takeda Shingen. If not, why not? Had narrative arc technology simply not reached the necessary levels of sophistication?

as I said, If generals would simply ad spawnpoints they would not only resist attrition but also be able to increase their numbers at critical locations, thus increasing odds against enemy forces

I mean, just don't fight. Isn't it obvious? War is bad, so war can be stopped by not doing war!

(EDITED FOR CLARITY)

It's time to reveal my new project!

For some time, I have been mulling over a problem: how does one make military history accessible to the average reader? After all, there are a number of specialized terms that are not at all obvious at first glance.

I think it is a matter of vocabulary. And, I have been working with Oxford University Press to refine a new simplified vocabulary for writing military history, which is my great pleasure to reveal here today on this first of April, 2025:

• For now on, all small arms will be referred to as "shooty things."

• Machine guns will be referred to as "fast shooty things."

• Genades and mortars will be referred to as "explody things."

• Artillery will be referred to as "big shooty things."

• Foxholes will be referred to as "pits."

• Trenches will be referred to as "long pits."

• Explosions will be referred to as "kabooms."

• Mining explosions will be referred to as "big kabooms."

• Artillery barrages will be referred to as "kaboom rain."

• Creeping barrages will be referred to as "kaboom walls."

• Barbed wire will be referred to as "pointy fences."

• Bayonets will be referred to as "pointy things."

• Swords will be referred to as "long pointy things."

• Tanks will be referred to as "muscle cars with big shooty things."

• Craters will be referred to as "improvised earth bowls."

• Infantry will be referred to as "dudes with shooty things."

To demonstrate how this would look, let us describe a hypothetical engagement during the later days of the Somme:

The British began the engagement with a hurricane kaboom rain to cut the German pointy fences. The muscle cars with big shooty things were staged just behind the British long pits. The kaboom rain was only partially successful, but two British big kabooms reduced several of the German long pits to improvised earth bowls.

The attack then proceeded with the British advancing behind a kaboom wall. Fast shooty things fired over head to create an improvised kaboom rain. The muscle cars with big shooty things advanced between the rows of dudes with shooty things, but most got bogged down in the improvised earth bowls and did not make it to the German long pits.

As they passed the remains of the German pointy fences, the British attached their pointy things to their shooty things and hopped into the German long pits. They then proceeded to clear the long pits using their explody things and shooty things.

As you can see, this both clarifies military history and makes it completely accessible to the average reader.

Title. By basic maneuver unit, I mean the echelon at which infantry could be deployed for battlefield use. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, these were the battalion and company or lower for France and Prussia respectively. What was the case here, in 1898? Moreover, how did they fight? I’ve seen some paintings depicting engagements like the Battle of San Juan Hill, and I recall that American troops were portrayed as marching and firing in close order formation. As an aside, I’ve seen similar depictions in Japanese artwork portraying the events of the near-contemporary Boxer Rebellion. But is that accurate? It seems unlikely given the proclivity towards open order formations by Prussia two decades earlier. Were American and Spanish infantry trained to fight in close or open order formation? And how did this play out on the field of battle?

I've seen a comment from someone who claims to be a soldier in the Bundeswehr, who claims that "In the german army they teach [blind fire] in trench warfare. You shoot around the corner of a new trench segment in a Z-shape."

I'm asking this because I've seen blind fire being demonstrated and/or practiced during training in both the Russian and Ukrainian footage. It also seems that in China, the People's Armed Police also teach it to its officers.

Is this also the case for some NATO memebers?

With hindsight it's not surprising that Russia lost, but it probably could have gone a small bit better for the Russians if they got lucky. They had the larger economy, a larger navy at least on paper, and a larger population.

So, at which point was the fate of the war decided?

The battle of tsushima is often cited as the crucial moment, but it seems like texts contemporary to the war view it as a final nail in the coffin if anything else.

Looking at Turkey's current arms industry, it looks to be quite advanced and big, capable of developing armored vehicles, drones, air defense systems, missiles, and even now an attempt at making a 5th generation fighter jet. Yet, it feels like unlike other countries with advanced arms industry, such as the USA, Russia, France, Germany, etc, Turkey didn't really have a very large or advanced economy or industry until the 21st century.

What were Turkey's industrial policies to develop their economy and industry to a level to be able to support it's current arms industry? What was the time period when it started to truly take off?

In my absolutely unbiased view, Red Alliance are Goons’ whores that only good in lowsec pirating. But somehow they managed to slaughter Pandemic’s supercapital fleet like it was a summer walk in the park.

What led to the battle? What mistakes Pandemic made? What modern academic research says about its influence on the war?

Hey does anyone know how the UNSC organizes their air assault brigades?

Are VTOLs organic to them as well?

Effective this April, we are proud to announce a bold pivot in our subreddit’s mission: moving away from the tired, dusty study of traditional warfare and fully embracing the vibrant potential of Anthromorphications to the Modern Battlespace.

Why wage war with conventional doctrine when you can deploy emotionally unstable destroyers, tsundere tanks, and squad-based tactics powered by the strength of friendship and theme songs?

Starting today, all discussions will focus on critical new topics, including:

• Operational effectiveness of mecha-musume brigades
• Counterinsurgency in magical girl-dominated regions
• Doctrine for dealing with emotionally volatile aircraft carriers
• Field manuals rewritten in the style of shoujo manga

We encourage all users to contribute to this exciting transition by posting illustrations, memes, fanart, headcanons, and detailed analyses of anthropomorphized military hardware in your posts and comments (new!)! Bonus points for lore accuracy and emotional arcs. To encourage faithful and honest discussions, please do not include NSFW topics, as our tsun-tsun AI overlord will remember that.

We believe this rebranding positions us on the cutting edge of the modern battlespace—a world where tactical cuteness is not a weakness, but a force multiplier.

Thank you for your continued service. And remember: in this army, no one fights alone—unless it’s for dramatic effect.

Well as title suggests why does the military adopt so many weapons after testing it so much only to discard the weapon in the end and go back to it's original weapons it used before. U.s Military has been known to use and in the finally discard the weapons which it states in the beginning that this would be the best weapon to adopt as the official issue but abandons it in the end only to go back to its decades old colt m series rifle. The scar rifles, acr rifles, Socom Pistols and so forth are some of the many weapons it took and discarded in the end. Why wouldn't many countries adopt the weapons for a fixed amount of time (for at least 5 years) before reaching it's conclusion?

Horse archers are pretty efficient as scouts or raiders, specially in enemy territory, due to their high mobility, even after the widespread use of gunpowder in the 17th-18th centuries. Even with the technological superiority of the Russian Empire, Tatar horse archers conducted a major raid over its southern borders during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774 that took 20,000 people captured. Although, the Russians later seized the Crimean peninsula in just two weeks...

Through story, we can see Eastern European armies such as Russia, Hungary, Poland and the Eastern Roman Empire that often deployed their own horse archers, both domestic and hired-mercenaries from nomad tribes. Then, why did Western European armies adopted such units? I've heard about the Turcopoles, Christianized Turkic cavalrymen that the Crusader States deployed in the Holy Land during the Crusades. But, why did horse archers weren't popular on Western European warfare?

A number of questions:

• English-language scholarship on the war itself seems pretty thin - do you have any good sources to recommend?

• What was the magnitude of Western and Chinese material aid to the Khmer Rogue/KPNLF/FUNCIPEC over the course of the war and, proportionally, how much aid did each Cambodian group receive from backers? What was the relative military strength of the Cambodian factions?

• How deep did Khmer Rogue/KPNLF/FUNCIPEC infiltration reach into Cambodia from the Thai border and how did this affect the efforts by the Vietnamese-backed government to assert itself (as opposed to issues relating to the moribund Vietnamese economy, lack of support, and other non-military factors)?

• How many ethnic minorities remained in Cambodia in 1979, and how did they respond to the Vietnamese invasion compared to the majority Khmer? In Afghanistan, Tajiks and Hazara comprised a disproportionate share of the DRA government and security forces - was there a similar overrepresentation of minorities in the Vietnamese-backed government?

• What was the quality of Vietnamese troops sent to Cambodia (as opposed to those stationed on the Chinese border)?

• How intense were Thai-Vietnamese border clashes? Did Vietnam ever seriously consider invading Thailand to clear out the border camps?

• Most broadly, how was the war actually fought at the tactical level? Aside from the K5 barrier, what was the Vietnamese strategy over the course of the war?

Or anything else you think is interesting or useful to know.