sfoil blog – Page 4

Harry Potter and Millennials

On August 11, 2018

Why do Millennials like Harry Potter? Maybe because if you give J.K. Rowling the boy, she will give you the man. Whatever the higher merits of the books, they initially got popular because middle-schoolers liked The Sorcerer’s Stone. In what any fantasy aficionado recognizes as a considerable feat, Rowling then managed to maintain a steady, coherent output throughout our formative years. And then the movies. If the well has gone a bit dry since The Deathly Hallows Part II — things could be a lot worse.

This line of thought has some allure, and no small amount of explanatory power. But it’s also survivorship bias. Why not The Edge Chronicles, or His Dark Materials?

Because Harry Potter has Relevance — it reflects the actual world seen in a way that other fantasy works did not. Specifically, Harry Potter presents an idealization of an inward-looking, academically-focused technocratic bureaucracy. This reflected the world of middle-class Millennial children, and continues to describe the ideal world of older fans.

The ATGM Threat Part 3: Solutions

By sfoil

On August 9, 2018

In Current Affairs, Military Theory, Tactics

I’ve previously posted about the history of antiarmor weapons and the current state-of-the-art. The takeaway: tanks have never been invulnerable, and they don’t need to be. Also, Anti-Tank Guided Missiles have become and are becoming longer-ranged, more accurate, and more lethal. Despite improvements in ATGM technology over first-generation weapons like the AT-3 Sagger, American tactics have remained essentially unchanged for decades, although armor protection has improved.

The ATGM threat profile is a combination of standoff and high kill probability (per launch). Remember, these don’t have to make ATGMs completely worthless, just make them less useful. I’ll look at standoff first.

The ATGM Threat Part 2: Early Countermeasures & Modern Developments

By sfoil

On August 5, 2018

In Military History, Military Theory

In the last post, I recounted the history of antiarmor weapons up to the development of the anti-tank guided missile (ATGM). Now I’ll look at early countermeasures, and how well they hold up now.

Tactical Countermeasures

As stated previously, ATGMs allowed standoff both for aircraft and ground troops against armored vehicles. The Israelis, facing these weapons for the first time in 1973, struggled to counter the new threat of the AT-3 Sagger ATGM. The Yom Kippur War only lasted about three weeks, so all combatants were stuck with the equipment they had at the outset with no time to develop or even purchase new weapons. With no hope of a technical solution, the IDF settled on three basic tactics: suppression, evasion, and obscuration.

The ATGM Threat Pt 1: A Brief History of Anti-Armor Weapons

By sfoil

On August 2, 2018

In Military History, Tactics

Right now, I think that anti-armor weapons have gained an upper hand over tanks and other armored vehicles, and that the United States is falling behind in anti-anti-armor measures. They can take several courses to correct this. First, however, I want to lay out the history of the threat and how the current situation developed.

The First Tanks

Although it wasn’t the first battle in which tanks took part, the Battle of Cambrai in 1917 is the first major combined arms attack with a significant armored component, the use of armored vehicles beforehand having been relatively piecemeal. Together with the infantry of the 51st Highland Division, 476 British armored vehicles took part, of which 350 were combat vehicles (the rest were supply carriers and mobile radio stations, with perhaps some engineers in the mix). The attack succeeded, although as usual in the First World War the attackers proved unable to exploit their gains over the following days.

Are Paratroopers Good For Anything?

By sfoil

On July 30, 2018

In Current Affairs, Military History, Military Theory

Against an army sailing through the clouds neither walls, mountains, nor seas could afford security.

– From Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson

Inspired by a recent discussion at Naval Gazing.

“When Failure Thrives”

Airborne operations have not, historically, proven very successful. The current size of airborne forces in Russia (VDV) and the United States is purely the result of institutional inertia and parochialism. Read this and weep.

To briefly recapitulate the linked article: The most successful airborne assaults, launched by the Germans in 1940 (e.g. Eben Emael) in hindsight relied on the total novelty of parachute infantry. Even by later in WW2, airborne operations became less likely to succeed and more costly when successful than the Happy Time of the early war. At any rate, advances in air defenses and increases in the numbers of light armored vehicles (which lightly armed paratroopers have difficulty fighting) in rear areas made a repetition of operations like Neptune (Normandy jump) suicidal after WW2. Airborne operations, being useless against serious militaries, were increasingly confined to “interventions” against weak or non-state forces.

fallschirmjager

The 82nd Airborne owes more of its existence to the Nazis than NASA does.

Black Easter/The Devil’s Day by James Blish

By sfoil

On July 27, 2018

In Classic, Novels, Review & Recommendation, Science Fiction

Now that I’m done pontificating about the Divine Comedy, I’ll take it down a notch and look at James Blish’s modern-day occult fantasy novel Black Easter. Most reprintings collect Black Easter with its sequel, The Day After Judgment, as one work under the title The Devil’s Day. Given Black Easter’s abrupt ending — I hesitate even to call it a cliffhanger — the Devil’s Day format is the best package. Although the tale goes a little flat in the second half, if “modern-day occult fantasy” sounds like something you would be interested in, you will like this book.

devils_day

Cover of the combined version. Fairly tame by the standards of Baen.

A Manhattan for Manhattan Haters

By sfoil

On July 25, 2018

In Drinks

As far as the island in the mouth of the Hudson River: sorry, it sucks and there’s nothing I can do about it. This is about the Manhattan cocktail.

The Manhattan is a mixture of whiskey and vermouth, by default sweet (red) vermouth. The International Bartenders’ Association says:

5 cl Rye Whiskey

2 cl Red Vermouth

1 dash Angostura Bitters

Pour all ingredients into mixing glass with ice cubes. Stir well. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.Garnish with cocktail cherry.

The only real variation on this are advocates of a 2:1 spirit:vermouth ratio and assurances you don’t need to use rye whiskey (you don’t, but more on that).

The problem with this is — at least if your crowd is anything like mine — drinking anything with vermouth in it is sort of like paying black people a fair wage to pick cotton on your farm. There’s nothing, on examination, wrong with it, but still comes off as a sort of sinister affectation.

Women in Combat: Conclusions

By sfoil

On July 24, 2018

In Current Affairs

This is the fifth post in a row I’ve written about integrating women into combat units; I originally intended three. So what do I think?

Review

Women are definitely too physically different from men, and combat too demanding, to make suitable combat soldiers. The disparity is enormous. Also, the social dynamics of mixed-gender organizations make them even less effective as combat outfits.

Feminism and careerism, the primary motives behind the push for integration, will pressure military organizations to lower physical fitness standards for entry, retention, and promotion.

The services can fight this by having their public affairs organs manufacture glowing puff pieces about token women. They could also consider raising the organizational prestige of career fields where barriers to female entry are lower by appointing members of those fields to strategic positions traditionally held by maneuver officers. The Air Force and Navy aviation have managed to avoid lowering standards, but this is fundamentally more difficult for ground forces.

Women in Combat Pt 4: Concentration vs Dispersion

By sfoil

On July 23, 2018

In Current Affairs

I intended to include this in the last post but I seemed like a slightly different topic. If a small number of women are allowed into combat arms units, should they be concentrated into specific units or dispersed thinly across the entire service?

The Thin Film

Women soldiers in combat arms units will either be spread in a thin film throughout the entire service branch or concentrated into specific units. The latter can be done either with the goal of having all-female units, or not.

If spread out evenly, each combat arms company will have 1-5% women members. The biggest concern the services currently have with this is making sure a given woman has at least one other female “buddy” so she’s not left completely to the mercy of the men around her in various ways. The low concentration does mean that not every sub-unit will have a female member e.g. only one platoon or even squad in a company might have a woman in it. If this woman turns out to be unfit for “line” duty, which is quite likely, their low density means the company or battalion commander can squirrel them away in their headquarters without serious loss. This already happens on a routine basis as things stand now in all-male units. The chain of command must avoid, or at least avoid publicizing, “disparate impact”-style analysis of such assignments in the integrated force, since they will reveal that such “relegation” occurs far more often to women.

Women in Combat Pt 3: Muddling Through

By sfoil

On July 19, 2018

In Current Affairs

Integrating women into combat units is a bad idea, but it’s going to happen anyway, because integration has nothing to do with increasing (or maintaining) unit effectiveness.

Women are fine for sedentary and rear area activities. Many of these duties — what go generally under the moniker of “combat service support” — have a very long history of being done by women. They were gradually professionalized and put into uniform beginning in the early 19th century. This trend isn’t going to be, and shouldn’t be, reversed; think of it as imposing certain duties and expectations on what would previously be “camp followers” in return for increasing their prestige. Even then, the 6th Century Byzantine Strategikon contains a reference to these camp followers having some role in defending what would now be called a forward operating base from attack.