JonS

AIUI, the early war stuff was cash-and-carry, which saw GB liquidating its global assets to pay for. But that tide was rapidly going out, which is why LL was enacted - GB literally couldn't pay for any more kit under C'nC. The post-war debt resulted from stuff that was delivered after LL finished in Sept 45. Some LL stuff was actually returned, but by and large the US didn't want any of it back, so what the recipient didn't want anymore and the US didn't want back tended to be destroyed (presumably to keep the accountants and auditors happy?). Some stuff was kept though, since it was quite often the only kit available for the new and smaller peacetime militaries.

Which would probably suit Putin juuuust fine.

Hell, America disagreed with it last time, but that didn't help (see; popular vote) Re: the appointments; yes, fair point, although AIUI there are /thousands/ of appointments that the president is entitled to make. As I recall, last time he was too busy golfing to fill most of them, and didn't really expect to win so didn't have a list ready to go. Slightly less laziness would fix both of those issues. Edit: ~4,000 positions. That probably goes a bit deeper than just the figurehead at the top of each federal orgn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_appointments_by_Donald_Trump

My understanding is that a lot of the friction last time (and, obvs, every administration) as due to people who were in political appointments. Head of this, director of that, secretary of the other. Career professionals who understand their agency, and why things are the way they are, and are guided by the long run agency mission and purpose rather than the whim of the moment. Apprently the president gets to make those appointments, so Turnip can - and presumably next time would - stack those friction appointments with loyal grease bags instead competent professionals. That, a more ... um, pliant Supreme Court, and a GOP controlled upper and/or lower house unable to muster any pushback, could see some very "efficient" changes in policy and direction.

Sanctions are working https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/350176938/russias-planes-are-falling-apart-west-blocks-repairs

This sounds an awful lot like the popular working definition of maneauverism; if it works it's maneauvry (and bold), while if it doesn't it's attritiony (and reckless). I don't think that's a useful definition.

Fine. It's still not a comment that can be taken seriously.

Is this Erwin "dash to the wire" Rommel you're talking about, or Erwin "strand myself with my back to an unbreached minefield" Rommel, or is it Erwin "Medenine" Rommel.

Ok ... this is not a comment that can be taken seriously.

Do you think? I'm not sure - I mean, it's not like he, personally, stands to benefit from arms sales to Europe, so I expect he doesn't give a flying feck where the weapons come from ... other than making his daddy happy by getting folks to Buy Russia(tm).

Weren't you just talking about setting conceptual boundaries, otherwise every conversation has to include everything? Wait - maybe that was Steve. Anywho, I fear we may be missing the point of Operational Research. It's purpose is not to explain the causes and courses of a war, or a campaign, or even a battle. It's to provide metrics and rules of thumb to answer operational questions - like "if I attack a city, all else being equal, how many cas should I expect?" I don't have Rowland's book (although it's on my Amazon wishlist now), but his reputation does precede him so I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. And, given that you managed to completely butcher the interpretation of a simple diagram/graph/chart/thing, in this particular case I am also inclined to disregard your attempted criticism of his work.

well, we now know of at least one person who watch the TC interview, and thought "Ayup. That all sounds legit."

I don't recognise this description of the second half of WWI, other than as a general outline. The British had shown several ways to break in to solid defences in 1917 at Messines, at Passchendaele, and at Cambrai. Bite and hold is fundamentally attritional, but it's also really productive. At least in the context of 1917. The German attacks worked - ever so briefly - in early 1918 because they had good force concentration and ratios as a result of moving forces from East to West, and because the Allied - especially British - forces they faced were themselves heavily attrited. Lloyd-George had deliberately withheld replacements from shipping to France as a way of preventing Haig mounting another offensive. However that also left the British lines wildly undermanned, and when combined with a poor defensive doctrine that hadn't previously been tested the British front line positions collapsed. Yes; the new tactics definitely helped. But the Germans would have - at least they should have - been able to advance even without them. But the Germans couldn't sustain their own offensive. Why? Because they themselves had been so heavily attrited at the tactical, operational, strategic, and political levels. Ze Germans didn't stop in front of Ameins because they're such good sports. They stopped because they were tactically and operationally spent. Ludendorff deliberately eschewing an overarching operational plan didn't help either. "Let's just attack and take it from there! Let's see what happens!" I mean ... WTF? The latter German attacks through to July were even stupider operationally, and wildly unsuccessful tactically. Shall we, for example, talk about the wonderful "new ideas" and "infiltration tactics" on display on 15 July? Probably best not to, eh? Overall the main effect of the Spring offensives was to inflict such severe attrition on the German forces that, when the French and British went on to the offensive from August, they had all the defensive coherence of a wet paper bag. At that point attrition had truly done it's thing, and operational movement recommenced.

There's about 60 battles there, not 15. The X's are the ones that there is only partial data for. None of the ~60 battles ticked over 1:1 cas atk:def That's a very counter-intuitive result.

@The_Capt from over a year ago ...

By the by; 100kg probably isn't enough for a soldier and their equipment. It's /probably/ enough for a wounded soldier, on the assumption they're stripped of weapons, webbing, helmet, & armour before being loaded in 'the coffin.' A 200kg max load would give an adequate performance margin in most circumstances I should think, or possibly 150kg if you're prepared to accept failure more often (because hot and high, or "just one more" AT4 stuffed in there, or etc). But otherwise I quite like the idea of the flying coffin as a platoon mule. As Syd Jary once wrote, bring back my carrier (talking about bren carriers at the platoon level).

Clausewitz, were he still around, would disagree with you. He recognised that victory could be achieved by either annihilation (via maneauvre) or exhaustion (via attrition). Then again, he's old and dead, so his ideas probably aren't relevant anymore.

Then "all scholars" are falling for the false dichotomy fallacy.

Can we call the GOP "baloney-eating surrender monkeys" now?

This ... is not really how fire support planning works. Not after the very coarse first-pass at terrain selection, anyway.

It depends. Speed and weight of response from the guns remains superior, so if I find myself in the **** I'd want the guns since they're available within minutes, regardless of our spatial relationship to each other. If I'm just dicking around inflicting some attrition, and time or co-ordinated maneuver aren't important, then gimme drones.

Meanwhile, COIN/HADR/lower-intensity-stuff is going to remain human-centric and require lots and lots of solders, not 'bots. It's going to be quite the trick to square that circle.

As I said: compared to COTS

Hmm. I'm really not sold on this dronetopianism. Granted, that is partly cap-badge tribalism. Mind you, in Commonwealth-style armies - and probably most Western-style armies - drones are likely to end up in fires units (that is, artillery units) anyway, so it'd be a change but not a loss of organisational influence. As an example, look at how rockets were absorbed by the artillery fraternity. But I don't think tribalism is the only reason influencing my thinking. To start with, it seems like a version of the old argument "if snipers are so great, we should just train every rifleman to be a sniper!" Yes, snipers are great, but the personal attributes required to be a sniper a rare, they're really expensive and slow to train, and the final product is also of niche utility. A notional 18th Sniper Brigade would either be tactically and operationally useless, or a very very expensive hammer being used to crack grapes. Drone operators seem to suffer from the same limitations, and without good drone operators all you'd have is a ToyWorld's-worth of spare parts sitting behind battalion HQ. Drones are really good at hitting and destroying the specific point they're aimed at, but appear to be pretty terrible at damaging or even annoying anything else. That's kind-of ok as long as you have really super great - and really super reliable - tac ISR. 'Dumb' artillery is good at damaging the thing it's aimed at, and great at suppressing that as well as everything else in the general vicinity. PGM artillery shifts that seesaw towards damage and away from suppression, but retains both effects. Also, the drills required for a single artillery forward observer to remove an entire grid square from your "worried about" list are fast (ie, minutes), simple and well trained. Trying to do the same thing with drones would be extremely slow (ie, hours), require hundreds of operators, and consume the entire cognitive abilities of at least a bde HQ. Hopefully nothing "interesting" happens while they're busy with that. Logistically, artillery ammunition is famously "heavy", but it is also very compact and simple. The rounds come packed in geometrically simple tubes, they stack really well, and are insensitive to heat, cold, dry, damp, and being bounced around and generally careless treatment. Drones appear to be light and simple and easy - hell, I can carry two in boxes under my arm, and get a dozen in my car! Well, sure, but how does that scale? When every rifle company is firing off 100 munition-drones per day, and every battalion is burning through a thousand ... where are you putting all the dunnage? Who is assembling them? How many trucks are running about in constant loops to bring them forward from Div HQ? Drones are also kinda fragile. That's partly why they are so comparatively cheap, but what is an acceptable dud-rate for drones? Drones are definitely a problem for conventional artillery, as a supplement to traditional CB. They're also "competition" for conventional artillery, as a supplement to traditional fire support. And that's the key word: supplement. Not replace. Incidentally, part of the reason 'mil-spec' kit tends to be so expensive is that wars are rare and peace is normal. Most kit spends most - like, 99.something% - of it's time sitting around waiting for a war. But it isn't really just sitting there, it's being used on a regular basis to support training and exercises, and that kit needs to stand up to that regular use and abuse, and then be ready to transition to war-use at a moments notice. That ruggedness and decades-long reliability costs money. COTS drones offer none of that. I get that the flash-to-bang time for drones in Ukraine right now is probably being measured in weeks at best but, again; wars are rare and peace is normal. For a standing army that is mostly at peace - like, oh, all of NATO for the last three quarters of a century - that $1000 COTS drone is going to have to last a lot longer than a few weeks. It's going to have to support multiple courses and exercises, over many years. Occasionally one will be expended in training but, as with Javelins or VLLAD missiles, that's going to be the exception rather than the rule. The rest of the time it just gets lugged around as make-weight.