History AwesomeButImpractical / Military

** The French were second only to the Soviets in how much the invested in tank production during the interwar period, and their designs had some good points. Their factories became skilled at casting, with the SOMUA S35 being the first tank with a hull made entirely from castings, and the FCM 36 was among the earliest to be made with welded armor. The tanks the French made in the leadup to World War II had substantial, often rounded or sloped armor which the standard German 37 mm antitank gun would often fail to penetrate. French tanks in general were more numerous, better armed, and better armored than the German ones, especially when you remember that more than half of the Germans' tanks in 1940 were small, barely-armored Panzer Mark I and [=IIs=] armed with machine guns and a 20 mm cannon, respectively. On paper the SOMUA was superior to 1940 German models in every way except for the one-man turret, and hardly anything short of airstrikes could stop a B1 bis once it got into battle.

** On top of all this, the crews weren't adequately trained on even the basics of operating their tanks, owing to the shortening of reservist training periods and the fact that many of these tank models--which had been stuck in DevelopmentHell and held back by inefficient manufacturing--were just beginning to be produced and delivered to the units by this time. A lot of tanks weren't even finished when they were sent from the factory almost directly into combat, leading to examples such as B1-bis tanks with no turret installed. The crews had little or no time to train on their vehicles before going into action: one famous issue was the complaint that the SOMUA had a ridiculously short range. This actually happened because it had two fuel tanks, both equipped with overfill valves for safety: a small one holding 110 liters which the engine drew fuel from, and a large 410 liter tank which replenished the small one. Crews who didn't understand how the overfill valves worked would pour fuel in until it looked like everything was full, and then afterwards they'd wonder why the tank ran out of gas so quickly, not realizing that they had actually filled up only the small tank. Another issue was that the hydraulic transmission of the B1-bis used large amounts of castor oil as lubricant, but not the type available in pharmacies because that stops working above about 80 degrees Celsius. Crews didn't understand the difference and assumed any kind of castor oil would do, which led to breakdowns and gave them the idea that the system was a piece of crap.

** Towards the end of World War I the French had come up with their first good tank design, the little two-man, 6.5 tonne Renault FT. The FT was the TropeMaker of the modern tank layout: tracks that extended the whole length of the vehicle, the driver in front, the fighting compartment in the middle with a 360 degree revolving gun turret, and the engine in back. The French decided on a strategy of using a "swarm" of light tanks to overwhelm the Germans, ordering 3,530. This seemed to work well with their overall strategy in 1918, and after the war there was a strong school of thought emphasizing relatively small two-man infantry support tanks. After all, if they wanted to swarm the Germans with a huge number of tanks despite lack of money and recruits, they'd need tanks that were cheaper to produce and required fewer men to operate. At the same time there were some people who championed the need for "fortress tanks" and "battle tanks" for the breakthrough role, leading to the creation of some heavies such as the Char 2C and the Char B1 bis.

*** Its incredible speed gets another good use when armed with a new ''Kinzhal'' SRBM/IRBM[[note]]No one is sure about the range of the blasted thing.[[/note]], an air-launched version of the already pretty impressive ''Iskander'' land-based one. Launching it during the top speed dash adds as much as 2 points to the Mach-8 terminal velocity of the baseline missile, making it about as difficult to intercept as a full-on ICBM[[note]]Now rendered questionable and possibly moot as of 2023 during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as US-made Patriot missiles systems prove that the Kinzhal ''can'' be intercepted and, [[PaperTiger like much of Russia's military]], calls into question its actual capabilities.[[/note]].

*** Its incredible speed gets another good use when armed with a new ''Kinzhal'' SRBM/IRBM[[note]]No one is sure about the range of the blasted thing.[[/note]], an air-launched version of the already pretty impressive ''Iskander'' land-based one. Launching it during the top speed dash adds as much as 2 points to the Mach-8 terminal velocity of the baseline missile, making it about as difficult to intercept as a full-on ICBM.

** The [=Su-57=] allegedly has maneuverability and stealth comparable to the F-22, but the F-22 is the absolute best in the stealth category ''and'' has maneuverability similar to Russian fourth-gen aircraft. The [=Su-57=] by comparison has design that only makes it LO [[note]] ''Not'' stealthy to the extent of the F-22 and F-34, which are considered VLO [[/note]], and it has to use Su-35 engines as a stopgap as it's Iz 30 engines are not ready yet. Furthermore, Russia only has a handful of [=Su-57s=] compared to the 187 [=F-22=] that the USAF has in service, and their economic state means they are unlikely to be able to procure more on short notice. The only current tangible advantage the [=Su-57=] is being an purchasable option for states that were/are adversarial to the US (since it, unlike the F-22, is being offered for export in the future, and unlike the [=F-35=] doesn't require the buyer to be on good graces with the US). Even so, most of the nations interested in it haven't confirmed export orders yet, rendering this advantage questionable (for the current time being).

* Speaking of robots,the Boston Dynamics "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BigDog BigDog]]" was meant to serve as a robotic "pack mule" that could keep up with soldiers in the field across a variety of terrains, essentially becoming a WalkingArsenal so the soldiers wouldn't have to carry heavy or dangerous equipment like mortars or demolition charges. Unfortunately, the government lost interest in the project because it was [[https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/news/a18768/ls3-marines-boston-dynamics-shut-down/ reported]] that robot was just too ''loud''. In order to have the power to keep up, it used a small 2-stroke engine that made an ''ungodly'' amount of noise, even with a muffler; it essentially would have made it painfully easy to track a squad's location and would have interfered with communication — while installing a four-stroke engine was out of question because their mass efficiency is significantly worse, and a sufficiently powerful engine would've been just too heavy, defeating the whole purpose of having a "pack mule".
* Col. James Burton's Blitzfighter concept is basically an A-10, but stripped down to the bare minimum until it was basically just a GAU-8 Avenger, a titanium bathtub cockpit with a radio and basic navigational instruments, and the engines and airframe itself. While a cheap, easily produced ''flying gun'' sounds cool in theory, the truth of the matter was this "Blitzfighter" was what amounted to a highly-expensive COIN aircraft-analogue which had about as much versatility as, well, a flying gun, and one which unfortunately would be utterly useless against modern main battle tanks at the time, the armors of which had already surpassed the GAU-8's piercing capabilites at about the same time the original A-10 rolled off the assembly line in the first place. When his superiors told him it would at least need a radar or thermals, [[HopelessWithTech he claimed that you couldn't tell anything about a ground target on radar]] [[InsaneTrollLogic so mounting radar on attack aircraft was a good way to get refugees killed.]] The fact that the Air Force told him that his concept was useless may be the reason he got involved with the Bradley's development and eventually [[BasedOnAGreatBigLie wrote the book]] that became Film/ThePentagonWars.

* Conceived in a post-Cold War environment, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program was intended for the US Navy to produce smaller ships that would solve the Navy's deficiency in asymmetric costal combat, resulting in the ''Freedom'' and ''Independence''-class ships. Each LCS vessel has many features to provide top-tier combat for lower costs like stealth abilities, automated systems to reduce crew size and swappable modular packages that could reconfigure each ship for any role on a short-notice. However, the LCS fell victim to feature creep that resulted in cost overruns and technical problems. Many modular packages like the unmanned de-mining and anti-submarine suites were unreliable and altogether costed over $7 billion, leading to the Navy abandoning the system. Likewise, the automation system proved inadequate for long-term operations, resulting in an overworked and understaffed crew. Additional trials showed numerous design problems in each ship like the ''Freedom'' having problematic engines and the ''Independence'' having cracking hulls. The decision to use both ships classes instead of picking just one created a logistic crisis as the ships couldn't share the same parts or crew training. In hindsight, LCS was too costly and complicated for a specialized role that could've been filled by a cheaper, more proven design like the Visby-class corvettes.

*** The Russian airdrop operation at the Hostomel Airport, done during the first days of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, showed the downsides of paratroopers in full. The Russian VDV lost a lot of soldiers in attempting to take the airport and took two days to successfully secure it. Unfortunately for them, it would end up becoming a SenselessSacrifice (from their perspective) when the Russians decide to withdraw from attempting to take Kyiv (near Hostomel airport) due to mounting losses.

* Conceived in a post-Cold War environment, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program was intended for the US Navy to produce smaller ships that would solve the Navy's deficiency in asymmetric costal combat, resulting in the ''Freedom'' and ''Independence''-class ships. Each LCS vessel has many features to provide top-tier combat for lower costs like stealth abilities, automated systems to reduce crew size and swappable modular packages that could reconfigure each ship for any role on a short-notice. However, the LCS fell victim to feature creep that resulted in cost overruns and technical problems. Many modular packages like the unmanned de-mining and anti-submarine suites were unreliable and altogether costed over $7 billion, leading to the Navy abandoning the system. Likewise, the automation system proved inadequate for long-term operations, resulting in an overworked and understaffed crew. Additional trials showed numerous design problems in each ship like the ''Freedom'' having problematic engines and the ''Independence'' having cracking hulls. In hindsight, LCS was too costly and complicated for a specialized role that could've been filled by a cheaper, more proven design like the Visby-class corvettes.

* Witness the Swedish ship ''Vasa'' launched in 1628. Armed with 64 cannons (out of 72 planned, the cannons weren't ready in time and were going to be installed later) on two decks, the ''Vasa'' was the most powerful warship in the world and in terms of naval firepower, would not be equaled for decades. She was also top heavy having little ability to naturally right herself (this is important in all but the calmest seas) and the lower gun deck was far too close to the waterline. In fact she was so ill-designed that she managed to sink on her maiden voyage, in full view of the citizens of Stockholm who had all turned out to see the maiden voyage.

** The Tsar Bomba was the largest nuclear weapon in history at 50 megatons. That's almost 1600 times the power of [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki Fat Man and Little Boy]]. The test of the bomb was the most powerful single thing ever done by mankind.[[note]]And the version they tested? It was actually tuned ''down'' to 50% yield. It was designed to be a 100-megaton monster - big enough that its explosion would have amounted to more than a full quarter of ''all'' radioactive fallout caused by testing of nuclear weapons since their invention fifteen years prior. It was toned down simply because there was no way in hell any plane that could drop the thing would be able to get out of its blast radius in time at the full yield.[[/note]] In spite of that there was never a need for such a single, powerful nuke, since it is far more efficient to destroy a large area using multiple, smaller thermonuclear warheads instead of one giant one.

** The Tsar Bomba was the largest nuclear weapon in history at 50 megatons. That's almost 1600 times the power of [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki Fat Man and Little Boy]]. The test of the bomb was the most powerful single thing ever done by mankind.[[note]]And the version they tested? It was actually tuned ''down'' to 50% yield. It was designed to be a 100-megaton monster - big enough that its explosion would have amounted to more than a full quarter of ''all'' radioactive fallout caused by testing of nuclear weapons since their invention fifteen years prior. It was toned down simply because there was no way in hell any plane that could drop the thing would be able to get out of its blast radius in time at the full yield.[[/note]]

*** The Russian airdrop operation at the Hostomel Airport, done during the first days of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, showed the downsides of paratroopers in full. The Russian VDV lost a lot of soldiers in attempting to take the airport, and took two days to successfully secure it. Unfortunately for them, it would end up becoming a SenselessSacrifice (from their perspective) when the Russians decide to withdraw from attempting to take Kyiv (near Hostomel airport) due to mounting losses.

** The Tsar Bomba was the largest nuclear weapon in history at 50 megatons. That's almost 1600 times the power of [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki Fat Man and Little Boy]]. The test of the bomb was the most powerful single thing ever done by mankind.[[note]]And the version they tested? It was actually tuned ''down'' to 50% yield. It was designed to be a 100 megaton monster - big enough that its explosion would have amounted to more than a full quarter of ''all'' radioactive fallout caused by testing of nuclear weapons since their invention fifteen years prior. It was toned down simply because there was no way in hell any plane that could drop the thing would be able to get out of its blast radius in time at the full yield.[[/note]]

** [[HollywoodHistory Despite common depictions of the contrary]], only one of Hannibal's 37 elephants survived the crossing of the Alps and the first battles in northern Italy, and did little more than parading Hannibal around.

* The dreadnaught battleship HMS ''Agincourt'' was a ship that the Royal Navy didn't particularly want, but seized it to keep it away from another country, who bought it from a third. At the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_American_dreadnought_race Chile, Argentina, and Brazil]] got into a naval arms race, each country buying battleships from foreign yards, as they couldn't build their own. Brazil, with plenty of cash from coffee and rubber plantations, ordered a ship from Armstrong Whitworth of [[UsefulNotes/NortheastEngland Newcastle]], with [[MoreDakka fourteen 12" guns]] in seven turrets (the most ever fitted to a battleship), partially in the spirit of this oneupmanship and to appear powerful to the Brazilian public. However, soon after this, the Brazilian economy took a sharp downward turn due to competition from rubber plantations in the Far East (planted by British companies, ironically enough) and Brazil sold the incomplete ship to the Ottoman Empire. The ship was actually completed and ready for delivery to her Turkish crew when UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne broke out, and the UK government seized the ship. This was actually a provision of the contract, but only if the UK was actually at war. First Lord of the Admiralty UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill didn't want to take any chances and ordered the Turks held off by gunfire, if necessary, which turned Turkish public opinion against the British and contributed to them joining the Central Powers. Now named after a famous British victory over the French[[note]]and nicknamed "Gin Palace" after the luxurious fittings the Turks requested and her name being [[IncrediblyLamePun A Gin Court]][[/note]], she was put into the Grand Fleet, where her shortcomings became apparent. Her firepower was so impressive that a full broadside completely hid the ship in flames and smoke, but to protect all those turrets and their magazines required the armoured belt to be unusually long, and thus it was unusually thin to keep the weight down. Barbette and deck armour was also thin compared to other dreadnaughts, making her something of a GlassCannon. And for all that, she participated in only one major battle, at Jutland, where poor visibility meant she fired 144 12" shells and 111 6" shells, but never hit anything.

* During World War II, the US Military subscribed to the "Bomber beats Fighter" philosophy by arming their bombers with [[MoreDakka multiple gun turrets]] for defense against enemy fighters. Many of bombers like the B-17, B-24 and B-29 bombers sported anywhere from from 8 to 13 machine guns. In theory, long-ranged bombers could only rely on themselves for protection as then-existing fighters lacked the range necessary for escort missions. In practice, the defensive armaments turned out to disappointment despite initial successes following advancements in air combat. Although the guns were initially useful against the BF-109 used by the German Luftwaffe, these proved inadequate against newer tactics and lightning-fast jet and rocket fighters that could evade the gunfire, while also being useless against ground-based anti-air. Improvements in fighter speed and range gave bombers adequate long-range fighter escorts that proved to be much more effective at reducing losses. Yet what ultimately [[IncrediblyLamePun shot down]] this doctrine was the development of beyond-visual-range missiles that gave fighters the ability to safely shoot down bombers from beyond the guns' maximum firing range. Subsequently, most post-WWII bomber models have had few if any defensive weapons, which would be little more than deadweight at the cost of plane mobility and payload.

* The long, proud history of trying to make [[MixAndMatchWeapon swords, knives, or hatchets that are also guns]] or [[SwissArmyWeapon swords, knives, or hatchets that turn into guns]] mostly belongs here, but the trend hit its zenith (or nadir, depending on your perspective), with the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_revolver Apache revolver]], an attempt at making a gun that's also a knife that's also a knuckle-duster. In practice, the revolver is horribly inaccurate outside of extreme close range, since it lacks both sights and a meaningful barrel, and unreliable, since the trigger has no guard or safety and the barrel actually points back to the user while folded into knuckle-duster configuration. The knife is a fold-over that's pretty short and just as imbalanced as most such [[MixAndMatchWeapon melee weapons that're also guns]]. Also, changing configurations was a pretty involved process in the heat of combat, negating most of the advantages of having a gun that's also a knife that's also a knuckle-duster.

* Col. James Burton's Blitzfighter concept is basically an A-10, but stripped down to the bare minimum until it was basically just a GAU-8 Avenger, a titanium bathtub cockpit with a radio and basic navigational instruments, and the engines and airframe itself. While a cheap, easily produced ''flying gun'' sounds cool in theory, the truth of the matter was this "Blitzfighter" was what amounted to a highly-expensive COIN aircraft-analogue which had about as much versatility as, well, a flying gun, and one which unfortunately would be utterly useless against modern main battle tanks at the time, the armors of which had already surpassed the GAU-8's piercing capabilites at about the same time the original A-10 rolled off the assembly line in the first place. When his superiors told him it would at least need a radar or thermals, [[HopelessWithTech he claimed that you couldn't tell anything about a ground target on radar]] [[InsaneTrollLogic so mounting radar on attack aircraft was a good way to get refugees killed.]] The fact that the Air Force told him that his concept was useless may be the reason he got involved with the Bradley's development and eventually wrote the book that became Film/ThePentagonWars.

* Stealth aircraft in general fall into this trope. They're hard to detect with standard engagement (X-band) radar, allowing them avoid anti-air and launch surprise attacks. However, their advantages are offset by higher costs and performance penalties. Most stealth aircraft are more expensive to build and maintain than conventional aircraft, often requiring separate factories and hangars. They also have reduced combat capabilities as they carry their weapons and fuel internally to avoid detection. They would also be detected if they use conventional radar or radio (or outgoing datalinks), and can be detected with IRST or VHF radar (latter of which however can only be ground-based). While ideal for niche roles like attacking heavily defended command centers, they aren't versatile or practical enough to completely replace conventional planes.

* The concept of a "torpedo bomber" became this by mid-to-late World War II for most if not all sides. Sure, hand-delivering a self-propelled OneHitKO to all but the toughest and most armored ships from on high might sound fun, but to get the things on target, you have to fly very low (so the torpedo won't just plunge straight down and go under the target on release) and very slow (so the torpedo doesn't break apart or accidentally detonate upon impact with the water), and at that point you're essentially a sitting target for any AA gunner with more than two brain cells to rub together. Compounding this is that torpedoes...aren't exactly the most reliable and robust things to drop from airplanes, so there's a chance they'll miss the target or prematurely detonate anyways, even if you ''do'' manage to survive long enough to drop the ordnance; the Americans learned this the hard way during the Battle of Midway, where ''not a single torpedo'' managed to score effective damage to the Japanese fleet[[note]]Admittedly, some of this was due to severe issues with the Mark 14 torpedo itself; it was extremely prone to leveling out too deep after being dropped, it's new magnetic detonation system (to set it off if it got close enough to a mass of metal like a hull) often failed to work, or set the torpedo off prematurely, and the backup pressure-based detonator also suffered from extreme reliability issues[[/note]], and the losses among torpedo bomber pilots were ''astronomical'', a fact not helped that most were flying incredibly outdated Devastators (though even the one squadron flying the new Avengers suffered heavy losses as well, and also failed to score any strategic hits.) The Japanese had better luck, since their torpedoes were more reliable, but even then casualties among "Kate" crews pulling torpedo runs were still very heavy. It is also very easy for smaller and more maneuverable ships (like destroyers) to dodge the torpedoes if the bombers dropped them very far from their intended victims. Aerial torpedoes are still used to this day from helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, but they are nowhere near as ubiquitous as before, having been supplanted by anti-ship missile-carrying aircraft.

* The concept of a "torpedo bomber" became this by mid-to-late World War II for most if not all sides. Sure, hand-delivering a self-propelled OneHitKO to all but the toughest and most armored ships from on high might sound fun, but to get the things on target, you have to fly very low (so the torpedo won't just plunge straight down and go under the target on release) and very slow (so the torpedo doesn't break apart or accidentally detonate upon impact with the water), and at that point you're essentially a sitting target for any AA gunner with more than two brain cells to rub together. Compounding this is that torpedoes...aren't exactly the most reliable and robust things to drop from airplanes, so there's a chance they'll miss the target or prematurely detonate anyways, even if you ''do'' manage to survive long enough to drop the ordnance; the Americans learned this the hard way during the Battle of Midway, where ''not a single torpedo'' managed to score effective damage to the Japanese fleet, and the losses among torpedo bomber pilots were ''astronomical'', a fact not helped that most were flying incredibly outdated Devastators (though even the one squadron flying the new Avengers suffered heavy losses as well, and also failed to score any strategic hits.) The Japanese had better luck, since their torpedoes were more reliable, but even then casualties among "Kate" crews pulling torpedo runs were still very heavy. It is also very easy for smaller and more maneuverable ships (like destroyers) to dodge the torpedoes if the bombers dropped them very far from their intended victims. Aerial torpedoes are still used to this day from helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, but they are nowhere near as ubiquitous as before, having been supplanted by anti-ship missile-carrying aircraft.

** What made the battleship become obsolete isn't so much their increased vulnerability but rather their decreased combat effectiveness compared to other ships. Contrary to popular belief, military technology doesn't become obsolete when it experiences new counters[[note]]As deploying that countered equipment forces the enemy to invest time, resources, and space - both in terms of storage space and space on the ship for whatever system fires the counter - to continue to manufacture, carry, and deploy the counter[[/note]], but rather when something else can perform the same task but better. For battleships, they were viable from the 1870s to 1940s because their combination of firepower and armor was necessary for when a sizable navy needed to stand their ground (ocean?) and fight. However, by the end of [=WW2=], carriers could both attack and defend themselves at much longer ranges, cruisers could be in more places at once, and destroyers were far cheaper and could do disproportionate damage with a lucky torpedo strike, plus do any odd jobs the fleet needed. Some, like the Iowas, stuck around because they had other uses (in the Iowas' case, they were fast enough to operate in a single force with the carriers and made great escorts, and their 16-inch guns were excellent for shore bombardment and cheaper than missiles for that purpose), but the main purpose of the battleship ended as soon as other ships, especially the carriers, really got going. One of the major silver linings in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor was that despite all the tonnage sunk in the attack, none of America's Pacific-based carriers were in the harbor at the time; two were at sea (''Enterprise'' was returning from Wake Island, and ''Lexington'' was delivering planes to Midway) and the ''Saratoga'' was in San Diego.

** What made the battleship become obsolete isn't so much their increased vulnerability but rather their decreased combat effectiveness compared to other ships. Contrary to popular belief, military technology doesn't become obsolete when it experiences new counters[[note]]As deploying that countered equipment forces the enemy to invest time, resources, and space - both in terms of storage space and space on the ship for whatever system fires the counter - to continue to manufacture, carry, and deploy the counter[[/note]], but rather when something else can perform the same task but better. For battleships, they were viable from the 1870s to 1940s because their combination of firepower and armor was necessary for when a sizable navy needed to stand their ground (ocean?) and fight. However, by the end of [=WW2=], carriers could both attack and defend themselves at much longer ranges, cruisers could be in more places at once, and destroyers were far cheaper and could do disproportionate damage with a lucky torpedo strike, plus do any odd jobs the fleet needed. Some, like the Iowas, stuck around because they had other uses (in the Iowas' case, they were fast enough to operate in a single force with the carriers and made great escorts, and their 16-inch guns were excellent for shore bombardment and cheaper than missiles for that purpose), but the main purpose of the battleship ended as soon as other ships, especially the carriers, really got going.

** What made the battleship become obsolete isn't so much their increased vulnerability but rather their decreased combat effectiveness compared to other ships. Contrary to popular belief, military technology doesn't become obsolete when it experiences new counters, but rather when something else can perform the same task but better. For battleships, they were viable from the 1870s to 1940s because their combination of firepower and armor was necessary for when a sizable navy needed to stand their ground (ocean?) and fight. However, by the end of [=WW2=], carriers could both attack and defend themselves at much longer ranges, cruisers could be in more places at once, and destroyers were far cheaper and could do disproportionate damage with a lucky torpedo strike, plus do any odd jobs the fleet needed. Some, like the Iowas, stuck around because they had other uses (in the Iowas' case, they were fast enough to operate in a single force with the carriers and made great escorts, and their 16-inch guns were excellent for shore bombardment and cheaper than missiles for that purpose), but the main purpose of the battleship ended as soon as other ships, especially the carriers, really got going.

** Even if they hadn't been rendered obsolete by airpower, ''Yamato'' and ''Mushashi'' defined the ragged outer edge of practicality for battleships. Manufacturing their armor pushed the limits of the Japanese steel industry. The maximum range of their guns exceeded the practical distance of naval gunfire, as the time of flight was so long that a target at extreme range could just dodge the shells by changing course when they spotted the gun flashes. The sheer size of their guns required the Japanese to invent an entirely new technology in materials handling equipment just to move the projectiles around the magazines. The extreme weight of their turrets exceeded the metallurgy available for their supporting bearings. And finally their price tags were so extreme the cost to construct them actually damaged the national economy. Finally their actually performance in operation makes a pretty convincing demonstration that the even bigger battleships planned by the Japanese and the Germans simply wouldn't have worked.

* Sometimes a military bureaucracy will become so preoccupied with maintaining the secrecy of a classified technology or a plan for a classified operation, that they’ll go too far and make it inaccessible even to decision makers and technical specialists who will be necessary to its implementation. Hell, sometimes they’ll come up with an idea and just plain forget to tell anybody. Sure, enemy spies are less likely to find out about it if you tell almost nobody that it even exists, but look what happened to the Canal Defense Light, a tank equipped with a powerful arc lamp that could be used to blind the enemy: since few British commanders knew it was available, it ended up under-utilized. Another case is the Mark 6 Exploder, which was used in the U.S. Mark 14 Torpedo; the plans for the exploder were locked up in some obscure place where nobody could look at them, and since few people knew how the detonator of the torpedo actually worked, it took longer than it otherwise would have to discover why the torpedoes were failing to explode when used against Japanese ships. Worse, any submariner who opened the thing up and actually ''fixed'' the issues out of frustration would be cited for "improper maintenance" since they had clearly done something against the book, which they had never been allowed to read in the first place.

* Sometimes a military bureaucracy will become so preoccupied with maintaining the secrecy of a classified technology or a plan for a classified operation, that they’ll go too far and make it inaccessible even to decision makers and technical specialists who will be necessary to its implementation. Hell, sometimes they’ll come up with an idea and just plain forget to tell anybody. Sure, enemy spies are less likely to find out about it if you tell almost nobody that it even exists, but look what happened to the Canal Defense Light, a tank equipped with a powerful arc lamp that could be used to blind the enemy: since few British commanders knew it was available, it ended up under-utilized. Another case is the Mark 6 Exploder, which was used in the U.S. Mark 14 Torpedo; the plans for the exploder were locked up in some obscure place where nobody could look at them, and since few people knew how the detonator of the torpedo actually worked, it took longer than it otherwise would have to discover why the torpedoes were failing to explode when used against Japanese ships. Worse, any submariner who opened the thing up and actually ''fixed'' the issues out of frustration would be cited for "improper maintenace" since they had clearly done something against the book, which they had never been allowed to read in the first place.

* During the Cold War, some armies dabbled in designing tanks with twin cannons mounted in a single turret. This arrangement would theoretically provide more firepower by letting the tank to fire two consecutive shots in quick succession. However, the double-barreled tank ran into many of the same problems experienced by the multi-turreted tanks from World War II. Not only would the arrangement add additional weight to the tank, but it would also take up too much crew space, making fighting conditions too cramped and exhausting. Also, the additional firepower would be overkill especially since nowadays a single tank round is accurate and powerful enough to destroy most armored targets. Even if a tank needed an increased rate of fire, there are always autoloader that provides the necessary firepower but with less weight and space. Currently, all armies mount twin cannons only on lighter anti-air vehicles and even then, their cannons have calibers no greater than 57 mm compared the the 90-125 mm guns used on tanks.

*** Now, despite its faults, Nicholas Moran [[https://youtu.be/57oRqB_a-SA notes]] that on the whole it was actually a pretty excellent tank; the problem is that it was designed to perform a specific role, and then it was yanked out of that role by circumstance. The Tiger was an elite heavy breakthrough tank meant to punch a hole in the enemy's line at a decisive point, which exploitation forces with cheaper tanks would then flood through. This would have involved a relatively short period of intense combat in which it might take a lot of fire (hence the armor), but the Tiger's job was done as soon as the breakthrough was achieved, meaning it could be withdrawn for maintenance and repairs to await its next mission. It wouldn't have been such a problem that it took more logistics and planning to transport, or that it took more man-hours to maintain, because that kind of breakthrough task wouldn't be demanded very often and there should have been plenty of time between missions to take care of those matters. The Tiger's high cost and low numbers were also acceptable to the Wehrmacht because it was never intended to replace standard medium tanks, but rather to support the military's panzer forces in an important specialized role. Unfortunately, when the invasion of Russia turned into a fiasco, desperate German commanders who were often ignorant of the Tiger's limitations turned it into what Moran calls "The Fireman of the Eastern Front": wherever the Soviets attacked German forces the Tigers would be rushed over there to defend, and no sooner had they put out the fire in one place then they would be on their way to extinguish another somewhere else. This lack of rest meant they couldn't take the the proper time for repairs or maintenance, and with ever more breakdowns the operational readiness rate of Tigers went way down, so that there often wouldn't be enough in working order when they were really needed. Maybe this tank could have been just plain awesome in the proactive role its was designed for, but it turned out impractical in the reactive role that was forced upon it.

** The sloped armor may have been good by 1941 standards, and could usually bounce the 3.7 cm round of the German Pak 36 anti tank gun, but its invulnerability to the Germans was somewhat overblown; they were still vulnerable to 8.8 cm Flak guns or to the Pak 38 firing 5 cm armor-piercing at close range. One reason for the invulnerable reputation is that German forces had no idea which Soviet tank was which, and sometimes misidentified the heavily armored [=KVs=] as T-34s, thus attributing the NoSell capability of the KV to the the T-34. Some T-34s actually had defective armor as a result of poor manufacturing. The protection was also somewhat negated by the tank’s blindness, inability to react, and frequent lack of infantry or air support. Only the platoon commanders' tanks had radios, leaving signal flags as the only way to attempt communication, so they tended to clump together "like a hen with its chicks" when they attempted any coordination at all. In other words, they often made themselves an obliging target. When you read the impressive-sounding account of a T-34 bouncing twenty-three 3.7 cm shells off the front before being disabled by a hit to the turret ring, you have to consider the FridgeLogic of how disoriented the crew must have been inside the tank to let themselves get hit that many times. The German use of artillery and air strikes helped to keep the T-34s suppressed and confused, allowing the Panzers and anti-tank guns to set up flank shots. Despite the superiority of the T-34 on paper, the Germans still destroyed them in droves.

* What could be more awesome than [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_elephant War Elephants]]? Unfortunately, they tend to panic in battle, trampling friend or foe with indifference. They were also extremely expensive with regards to food and upkeep, and have slow gestation and growth periods, meaning they are nigh-impossible to domesticate properly. Yet another issue was simply getting them, as they weren't exactly easy to find in Europe. It's theorized that the use of war elephants outright rendered some subspecies of elephant ''extinct'' due to it placing such a heavy burden on them.

** The charioteer needed his hands to control the team, and while it was possible to do it one-handed and wield a [[BladeOnAStick spear]] in the other hand, it was clumsy and awkward. Generally, chariots would carry two soldiers, one to drive and the other to use a bow or spear to kill people. [[RunningGag This means even more people to keep fed while on campaign]].