The Military/War Thread

[rms]

@Dak you catch that 1k arty marines went over and 1 BCT from Bragg left for Iraq/Syria last week or so?

 

[Dak]

@Dak you catch that 1k arty marines went over and 1 BCT from Bragg left for Iraq/Syria last week or so?

I knew arty Marine "boots were on the ground" yeah. Not surprised.

Edit:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/14/politics/us-russia-influence-libya/index.html

There was some open discussion of this at the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, when the four-star head of Africa Command acknowledged the US believes Russia is trying to manipulate the political outcome in Libya.

The pot getting mad at the kettle.

 

[CF87]

Someone died for you, so you can do whatever it is you do, so you have to respect the military.

 

[Dak]

Hugo Weaving's performance in Hacksaw Ridge is incredible, and Mel Gibson killed it in directing. Great movie.

Drawbacks: Wrong boots and Vince Vaughan. Not that he did a bad job, but because I can't believe him in the role.

 

[rms]

cant believe you enjoyed that film you christian fundamentalist <3

 

[Dak]

Well if only it wasn't the Army, and I haven't been in a protestant church except for funerals in like a decade.

 

[rms]

wasnt the dude a quaker?

 

[Dak]

7th Day Adventist. Big difference within Protestantism.

As one trying to return to service within a military medical capacity, I have some sympathies with the orientation. However, I have no issue with a weapon, as multiple expert rifle quals indicate.

Edit: The primary modern point is that although we can physically save many people at this point from total or partial physical incapacitation/death, there are mental considerations. This is within my area of interest.

 

[rms]

I'm about two days from going back in too. Got the results from the border patrol exam, maybe that'll keep me out.

 

[Dak]

Learned something new today:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_Upton

Upton is considered one of the most influential young reformers of the United States Army in the 19th century,[11] arguably in U.S. history. He has been called the U.S. Army's counterpart to United States Navy reformer and strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. Although his books on tactics and on Asian and European armies were considered influential, his greatest impact was a work he called The Military Policy of the United States from 1775. He worked for years on the paper, but it was incomplete at the time of his death in 1881.[13]

Military Policy was a controversial work in which Upton outlined U.S. military history and argued that the armed forces were imprudent and weak and "that all the defects of the American military system rested upon a fundamental, underlying flaw, excessive civilian control of the military." He denigrated the influence of the Secretary of War and promoted the idea that all military decisions in the field should be made by professional officers, although the president should retain the role of commander-in-chief. He argued for a strong, standing regular army that would be supplemented by volunteers or conscripts in time of war, a general staff system based on the Prussian model, examinations to determine promotions, compulsory retirement of officers who reach a certain age, advanced military education, and combat maneuvering by groups of four three-battalion infantry regiments. Upton's work had a profound influence on discussions of military and civilian strategy for years.[5][11]

After Upton's death, Henry A. DuPont, Upton's West Point classmate and a close friend, acquired a copy of the uncompleted manuscript. It circulated widely throughout the Army's officer corps and helped to foment much discussion. After the Spanish–American War, Secretary of War Elihu Root read the manuscript and ordered that the War Department publish it under the title The Military Policy of the United States. Many of the Army's so-called Root Reforms of the early twentieth century were inspired by Upton and his works.[14]

Also CHOYNA has its first domestically produced aircraft carrier.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

bump

 

[Dak]

Discovered the Jocko Podcast today. Relevant.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

http://www.historyinorbit.com/russias-new-generation-of-super-weapons-is-stunning/

 

[Dak]

https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2018/1/23/strategy-ethics-and-trust-issues

This reaction to the development of a new means of war is illustrative of the type of concerns that must be addressed if the military organisations are to adopt far ranging plans for human machine integration. Each military organisation, regardless of nation or service, will approach the challenges of human-machine teaming differently. Variations in military culture, national strategy, and societal expectations will ensure a multitude of solutions are derived from different military institutions. This variety of institutional strategies developed for human-machine teaming is a good thing. It will provide for sharing of lessons and cross-pollination of best practices – at least among Western military organisations. The central issue, however, is that military organisations must each possess realistic strategies that address the challenges described in this article if they are to successfully exploit the future of human-machine teaming.

 

[Dak]

https://thestrategybridge.org/the-b...itical-communities-owe-their-military-members

People are willing to give up some of their freedom to form political communities and make their rights more secure than they would be in a state of nature. This means one of the political community’s purposes is to secure its members’ rights, and members of the military are members of this community. Because of the risks associated with military service and the needs of a functioning military, military members are not able to fully enjoy the rights other members of the political community enjoy. This is, along with the military’s role in defending political communities, why political communities have special obligations towards their military members. These special obligations include effective training, good equipment, subsistence, and the ability to enjoy the full benefits of the political community once their military service is over. The specifics of these special obligations should be discussed by the political community and should account for changing conditions.

 

[Dak]

Total random note, but it's crazy how much older Mattis looks than John Kelly, and Kelly is a few months older.

 

[Dak]

https://thestrategybridge.org/the-b...ations-of-the-torpedo-scandal-of-world-war-ii

Very interesting read all around.

 

[Dak]

https://warontherocks.com/2018/07/five-years-in-the-25-most-read-war-on-the-rocks-articles/

 

[zabu of nΩd]

https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2018/1/23/strategy-ethics-and-trust-issues

Interesting article, but when it comes to what war will look like when "men and machines merge", I don't see how you can leave out concerns over mind control.

I know mind control has a long history of bunk conspiracy theories / unsubstantiated fears because drugs are often the center of discussion, and the effects of drugs are just too random to make them a "perfect" weapon - but I think brain interfaces are gonna open a Pandora's box of 1984 style shit.

We've already got rudimentary thought identification with MRI machines. Apparently we can give mice "light-activated neurons" too, and program false memories into them:

Inception of a false memory by optogenetic manipulation of a hippocampal memory engram

Here, we first identified a population of cells in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus that bear the engrams for a specific context; these cells were naturally activated during the encoding phase of fear conditioning and their artificial reactivation using optogenetics in an unrelated context was sufficient for inducing the fear memory specific to the conditioned context. In a further study, DG or CA1 neurons activated by exposure to a particular context were labelled with channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2). These neurons were later optically reactivated during fear conditioning in a different context. The DG experimental group showed increased freezing in the original context in which a foot shock was never delivered.

 

[The Ozzman]

Discovered the Jocko Podcast today. Relevant.

There's some amazing shit discussed on these podcasts