The Spanish Civil War was fought between 1936 and 1939. It was a test-bed for the rapidly evolving science of war and all major powers had "observers" reporting to their respective powers about what technologies worked and which did not.
The Germans were able to implement the lessons more rapidly than their counterparts and caught Central Europe, France and the British flat-footed with their ability to leverage mechanized and airborne resources to rapidly deploy forces.
The wars in Ukraine and the middle-East have a similar flavor to the Spanish Civil War. Drones, in particular, are saturating the hostile space and there is much experimentation in how to use them best. Most recently, North Korean forces under the direction of Russian officers were slaughtered like so many baby chicks when they used obsolete, Soviet battlefield doctrine.
Meanwhile, in the middle-East, Israel sits like a stationary, carrier-based battle-group. Many military thinkers are predicting the demise of the carrier-based battle-group due to rapidly evolving missile, drone and image processing technologies. And yet Israel is demonstrating that there are counter-strategies that are moderately-to-very effective against those offensive technologies. Unfortunately, every effective defense informs the designers of the offensive weapons.
Pray that these two wars are not the warm-up calisthenics before The Big Game.
I have heard it said that every army always starts out fighting the last war again, so much depends on how rapidly they can grasp what has changed and adapt to it. Having said that, I have read that trench warfare made a comeback in Ukraine where opposing forces pretty much reached stalemate.
ReplyDeleteThat stalemate at the front lines is part of what is driving the deep strikes into Russian territory and hits on power infrastructure deep within Ukraine.
DeleteThe range of the drones now available are limited to immediate, tactical targeting (which is what doomed the Norks) and much more expensive units with +100km range that are the equivalent of snow-mobiles or large motorcycles in terms of mass and mechanical complexity. There is very seems to be a valley in capability that can economically counter-battery 155mm and 122mm arty. I expect that to change.
I am convinced that these are the warn-up calisthenics for what lies ahead. Don't go further from home than you can walk back---ken
ReplyDeleteRevelation is coming like the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
DeleteAs George Carlin once opened,we are a warlike species, we like war. And I wouldn't expect that to change. As for the next "big one", that's a matter of when, not if. Eventually something somewhere will trigger another massive conflict. The details aren't really important. But it will happen. We are a clever species, not an intelligent one.
ReplyDeleteI watch several different war mappers, for example MSC and Willy OAM, and they all will tell you there is no evidence for any claims about NK soldiers on the battlefield. The only public source is Zelensky, who has clear motivations for making such claims.
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