From sky to capsize.

So yesterday I met up with Tangent in DC and he took this pic of me in front of this V2 rocket◊ at the Smithsonian.

I also got this pic of the V1◊

edited 26th Jul '14 6:54:02 PM by rmctagg09

As far as I can tell, the only reason Navy helos ever land in the water is for moto operations involving picking up and dropping off speedboats. Otherwise, they've got a winch. Aside from the danger of taking on too much water or clipping a wave with a rotor, you also have to deal with corrosion issues from salt water getting on everything (which is a problem just operating over the sea, but probably much more once you belly flop he helo into the sea).

Back to the topic of the Pocket strategy, the fact that the Americans and British had quite a bit of air support (and air resupply) during their campaigns adds a necessary third dimension into the factor. A pocket supported by a substantial air bridge with air cover is not completely surrounded, as they still have a friendly line in the form of the sky. A pocket that lacks those things (and in fact, where the surrounding forces has those things), is completely surrounded, with their only saving grace being that the enemy is probably not digging a tunnel to set off a bomb underneath them (as was done in the American Civil War and World War One).

Yeah they already arrived. I posted last year in this thread that Remington won the bidding over Colt.

This just hit US blog sites. It's a big win for Remmington. Colt has Malaysia however. They let Malaysia make M-4's under license.

In other news:

• Army Stays Quiet on Army Camouflage Selection

Army leaders might not want to draw attention to this type of spat after canceling a modernization program to replace the Bradley that cost tax payers hundreds of millions of dollars.

So Big Army hopes the uniform debacle shields it from the canceled AmerikaMaus.

• Marines to Get Fewer Assault Ships, someone get Tuffle a fainting couch and some beer...

• Norway’s Joint Strike Missile Tempts Aussies; Raytheon Likes It Too: the little missile that could...

edited 26th Jul '14 9:26:17 PM by TairaMai

[[ http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=13125346&postcount=70 While I was looking at thread in the Giant forums']] I found something interesting about Drill Sergeants

I had no idea that DI come in fours or even more numbers, I always thought that it was always one guy dealing with a whole platoon. Do DI really come in more numbers? How many are usually in Basic?

Yet even with heavy air cover, a besieging force with lots of teeth in regards to modern anti-air defenses can almost completely neglect the air dominance of the surrounded defenders; the French in Indochina (whose aviation arms consisted largely of hired USAF airmen in the first place) cited your very exact reasoning to justify their aeroterrestre doctrine and were able to reinforce and resupply Dien Bien Phu efficiently until the Viet Minh brought up almost the entirely of their Chinese and Soviet AA guns into the fray.

Wait a minute: poorly supplied light-infantry-based army with absolutely no air support? Unable to recruit locally? Pitted against a large, well trained [Western] force? while sticking to plan with extremely optimistic, bare bones, or nonexistent logistical planning? You know what this sounds like man?

Fridge Brilliance: Of course it's one thing to devote your forces into a pocket battle if your enemy consists of nothing but a screaming horde of infantry with minimal heavy weaponry and a horrid logistics system in support - after all, the British stopped an entire Japanese invasion of India and forced the tide back into the latter's own pre-war starting points in less than a matter of months. Even if several of my major "forward strong-points" become encircled if their flanks give, I've got command and dominance of both the skies and the sea to keep them on a lifeline while two options can be considered - ideally a dual encirclement of the besieging enemy is the way to go, as that's exactly what worked in India/Burma, but if the shit really hits the fan, I could also use my technological might to ensure a successful breakout in the worst case scenario.

So yeah, I'm sure that we can tackle that incoming offensive of thousands of Chinese "volunteers" as long we retain our proud American fighting spirit and remain determined and steadfast against all odds; sure, a number of my units will get trapped and encircled if I order them to hold fast, but we can always break them out with our superior Western technological military might. Plus, we're the Yanks With Tanks here - not only is it quite un-American for our troops to be retreating from the soldiers of an impoverished Asian nation, and a Dirty Communist one at that, but we'll be shamefully surrendering all of our territorial and political gains that we fought so hard and were formally humiliated so badly for only months before. It doesn't really help that our supreme commander of forces in the Pacific made a PR promise to have the boys home by Christmas, so the only real choice we have at this moment to try telling that absurdly huge number of Chinese "volunteers" just miles up north You Shall Not Pass!.

Yeah, we're completely forgetting how the Nazis With Gnarly Weapons ended up losing their war against the Reds With Rockets because they're Cloud Cuckoo Lander of a leader got off of his troops trying to stand firm and suicidally hold the line, but we're too preoccupied right now to think about that example. I mean, we just might be repeating their same mistakes, but c'mon, the Soviets were a modern power to begin with and had first class toys and equipment that made them a force to be reckoned with. That Chinese volunteer army or whatever-they-call-it doesn't even have tanks to begin with, much less enough trucks for its supply lines and small arms for its troops.

C'mon: we can't let a bunch of Chinese laundrymen stop us. Have X Corps stand fast and hold the line. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll have to get on the phone to argue with the commander of that one Marine division of mine.

edited 26th Jul '14 11:25:14 PM by FluffyMcChicken

Actually, the pocket idea worked brilliantly against Chinese charging tactics after the shock of the counterinvasion and the January 1951 scramble to reestablish the lines. Establish a perimeter, preregister artillery, dig in, and let the Chinese infantry regiment batter itself to pieces. One of the main tactical criticisms of Eighth Army in 1950 was that it never bothered to set up defensive perimeters at all because it never counted on the Chinese attacking in force. Once they relearned those lessons, got a functioning logistical system going, and figured out the art of perimeter fighting again, UN losses plummeted and Chinese losses soared. It'd never have worked if the air were contested or if their enemies could funnel in enough equipment to seriously contest the defenses or to threaten the logistical lines, but against the light-infantry army? Post-1951 Korea could be summed up as "UN holds 38th Parallel, PVA never could muster enough forces to threaten a victory, both sides negotiate for two years".

So, all sarcasm aside, the pocket battles worked against light infantry forces—so long as the defenders could maintain fire superiority and logistical ingress. The US never had that seriously threatened; the closest things came was at Khe Sanh. The French lost their pocket at Dien Bien Phu when they lost the logistical route in and lost fire superiority when the Viet Minh hauled their artillery onto the heights.

edited 26th Jul '14 11:32:20 PM by SabresEdge

All of that being said, I suppose I'll take some notes down somewhere basically stating: Defensive Pocket Strategy - ideal and workable in Third World conditions. Functional but risky in Second. Absolutely suicidal in First. Do not use against enemy force sufficiently equipped with modern weaponry and air forces, especially those that involve anti-air capabilities. Excellent for bleeding out the enemy and forcing him to take casualties, but risks total annihilation of defending forces if the lifeline supplying them is compromised.

Here's why I've been so pessimistic and cynical regarding the use of pocket strategies - all it takes is simply a Dangerously Genre-Savvy opponent to bring his load of anti-air weaponry as to deny or at least shake up that air bridge; all those bulky and slow moving transport planes that serve as the nucleus of any air bridge are easy pickings for almost any air defense weapon, and the simple fact that the airmen flying in them know that they're being shot at is enough to pressure them to get the hell outta there before the missile lock alarm starts beeping.

A platoon of twenty or so men is already quite a number for a single man to manage, so naturally drill sergeants usually serve as a Big Bad while having several Dragons to assist him and carry out tasks usually seen as too petty for him to be handling at a single moment. Four seems a reasonable number: various war films from across the world that I've seen, be it from West Germany or Taiwan, portray drill sergeants coming in groups almost no larger than four or five.

Right: maintaining the air bridge is vital. Dien Bien Phu is what happens when the antiaircraft manages to shut down the ingress route. On the other hand, the NVA tried the same with Khe Sanh; the US responded with massive airpower blitzes to suppress the flak so that supply helicopters can come in. Supply helicopters are easy targets, but that's only if the flak gunners aren't too busy hiding in the entrenchments or trying to shoot back at the fighters currently plastering them with rockets, bombs, napalm, and/or tear gas. (It wasn't banned by convention and it turned out to be handy for, say, keeping the crew of a ZPU-4 away from their machine guns while the supply Hercules lumbered in to unload cargo and to load casualties.)

Khe Sanh falls under the category that I listed in how the NVA was still limited by its Third/Second World environment and circumstances; otherwise, had Khe Sanh occurred in a World War III Europe with the Soviet military as its besieger, the U.S forces' air bridge and SAD sorties would've been intercepted by a potent combination of the Soviet Air Force in the sky and a Macross Missile Massacre by army SAM units on the ground. The Soviet traditional penchant for ridiculous concentrations of armoured force, the rapidly changed technological battlefield by the time of the Cold War, and the U.S garrison's limited mechanized forces would have rendered a German or Chosin-style breakout extremely difficult, if not impossible to achieve.

Another reason of why I dislike pocket strategies is that they require one to put a force in an already compromising situation where they would count on being surrounded while relying on a delicate air bridge in exchange for only the simple edge of luring enemy out into the open. That's not even mentioning the possibility that a Genre Savvy opponent could simply opt to bypass the well defended pocket as a whole, as the Soviets eventually did to extreme success during Operation Bagration and other late war offensives.

Pocket strategies are inherently defensive; if you've resorted to them it means you're not attacking. Naturally, they shouldn't be the go-to. But when you're building up your forces for an offensive (CBI theatre 1944) or when you're caught by surprise by an enemy attack and are defending, or otherwise figure that defensive tactics are the way to go (Khe Sanh, Korea), they're vital. But you're absolutely right in that you can't rely on pockets alone to win a campaign—for the same reason that you can't rely on defensive fighting alone to win a war. They're an inherently defensive idea, and while fighting on the tactical defensive while remaining on the strategic offensive works well in a lot of circumstances, it's not suited for, say, pursuit or exploitation of a victory, or an audacious advance to contact.

Now, arriving first on some key point of terrain and digging in before the enemy can arrive, that's a little similar in that you're tactically defending while strategically advancing. But it's only a pocket if you get surrounded, and driving off the enemy before he can surround you is much preferable to letting yourself get surrounded in the first place. It wasn't avoidable due to terrain in Korea and Vietnam (and the Burma jungle belt when it was still swarming with Japanese battalions), but it wasn't ideal either.

And, as you've pointed out, it's even less ideal against a mobile, fast-moving opponent that can bypass the pocket if needed. Light infantry don't qualify there, but a motorized or mechanized army would.

@GAP: In US Army basic training there are 3 drill sergeants to a platoon of recruits:

• The senior drill instructor, usually a Cool Old Guy, many are on their last tour as a drill. Each term is two years at basic ("on the trail").

• The nice one: the good cop who is somewhat nice to recruits. Some will counsel new "warriors". Others just offer encouragement.

• The "kill hat": the bad cop. Responsible for discipline. This is the guy/gal who has a firm hand and who does a lot of the shouting. When it's bad enough that an on the spot correction isn't enough, the kill hat smokes the platoon. And yes, they will make themselves target of hatred so that the platoon comes together.

Each company in basic has at least 3-4 companies. Some have as much as five.

edited 27th Jul '14 4:22:03 AM by TairaMai

Huh. Now that I think of it, the sergeants assigned in basic training does fit into those categories.

Oh, all the times the whole platoon had to do push up because of the last guy.

When I went through Basic Military Training with the Air Force back in 2007 (each branch of the US military has a different setup and a different name for basic training/boot camp/whatever), we had a team of three instructors for two flights, each with 50-60 personnel. There was a Senior instructor and two Junior instructors (in my case they were all Staff Sergeants (E-5), in other flights one or more of them would be Tech Sergeants(E-6), and in one flight I saw two Tech Sergeants serving as junior instructors to a Staff Sergeant. There were a few instructors who were Senior Airmen (E-4, which is one level shy of being an NCO in the Air Force). After the sexual harassment scandal a year or three ago, they revamped the whole program, so now you have to be a Tech Sergeant with a glowing military record for them to do anything but feed your application to a shredder.

In any case, there was the instructor we saw most of the time, the instructor that focused on the other flight, and the third floated back and forth to cover for the other two. They had "Student Leaders" within the flight of trainees who would volunteer or be voluntold to help run the flight (Dorm Chief, Guide-on Bearer, and four Element Leaders), and those would find volunteers or volunteer other trainees to be in charge of specific things (one trainee made sure the bathroom was clean, and had a team detailed to him, another one was in charge of the cleaning and polishing (if necessary) of the floors, one guy was in charge of polishing all of the chromed surfaces (teaching us early on that the Air Force did not value our time so much as to not give us stupid pointless work to do) etc. If someone screwed up, they were usually replaced (one element leader was fired from that job because one of the trainees in his element failed to secure their locker, for example.)

I don't recall any particular set of roles I witnessed (I was in one flight for 5 weeks, then rotated into another due to a PT failure, then immediately pulled to get put on Medical Hold because the second set of instructors noticed the limp that my first set of instructors had evidently not noticed or cared about me having for the previous 3 weeks, then rotated into yet another flight to finish my training after passing my PT test).

In the first flight, the senior instructor was an asshole, and so was one of the junior instructors (who was also the funniest guy of the three due to his mastery of the Deadpan Snarker arts, a very dangerous combination for a trainee to encounter), and the third was the friendly bear. Very nice and encouraging until someone screwed up, and then he was throwing trash cans and furniture (masterfully sending things flying between trainees but never into them) for a few minutes before he left us to frantically unfuck whatever had pissed him off. Dude had an obsession with Elvis.

In the second flight (I rotated out for a knee injury and back in a month later), the senior instructor was something of very coldly calculating asshole (he made it obvious that he was specifically setting us up to screw something up, like having us do an Open Ranks inspection after we had done nothing but PT for the last two weeks, knowing we'd be out of practice with the drill movements), but the few times I ran into him while on medical hold, he was a genuinely nice and caring person. He also made it clear that if any other instructor treated us unfairly, he'd go Mamma Bear on them (I'll get to that in a second). He told us that there were two types of instructors at BMT: The kind that cared about their trainees' well being and taught them to look after anyone they're assigned with, including those who were "recycled" into their flights for various failures (inspection failures, PT failures, medical problems, discipline problems, whatever), and the other type that watched Full Metal Jacket too much and treated any trainee who wasn't "getting it" as dead weight to be excised as soon as possible so as not to spoil his chance at winning Honor Flight when his trainees graduated.

Which brings us to the third flight. All three instructors were assholes. The junior instructors were both more open about it, while the senior was obviously trying hard to be like the senior instructor I mentioned in the last paragraph. Their student leaders were all assholes, and felt very high and mighty about their relatively low status in the military, and made it clear that they expected me to get recycled out of their flight based entirely on my having been recycled into it. The instructors had them give us the bunks at the far end of the bay so we wouldn't "infect" their proper trainees that they had spent 5 weeks grooming to be the best the Air Force had to offer, and then proceeded to have the trainees hand over any clean laundry that hadn't been folded to be inspection ready yet so it wouldn't lower the flight's score for Honor Flight. A few days in, when it time for the flight's official drill inspection (which goes towards Honor Flight), the instructors had all the recycled trainees and all the trainees who were bad at drill to go wander the base as if we were on our way to appointments.

As it happened, one of my uniforms had not made it back from the laundry crew before I got rotated into that last flight, so I went that way to retrieve it. Followed by all of the trainees who couldn't march. Upon arrival, I was told to explain the gaggle I was leading, and since I hate lying at the best of times, and nothing about my treatment in the third flight made me particularly inclined to start on their behalf, I did. He asked me more about how the other instructors ran their flight, and I answered all of his questions truthfully. He called his superior, who called their commander, who called the other training squadron's commander, and whatever message was sent to the third flight's commander dropped down their chain fast enough that the instructor had decided we had earned our keep and he was magnanimously going to let us integrate fully into his flight, entirely on his own initiative.

The first set of instructors I didn't particularly like, but I respected. The second set of instructors were definitely not nice, but they had earned my respect and I'd probably low-crawl over broken glass for the senior instructor of that team. The third instructor team could get hit by a bread truck and it'd probably only negatively impact the Air Force due to the cost of repairing and cleaning the truck.

Oh my, I seem to have written a book.

X3 Yeah I graduated basic a few months ago and... none of the platoons really had that setup. All three (normally the company would have had 4 but we were missing a platoon that cycle) had Drill Sergeants that were unique in their group dynamic.

edited 27th Jul '14 5:35:25 AM by Canid117

Maybe not all three but the last one was definitely obvious for obvious reasons.

Kinda makes you wonder how much is just assigned and how much is real, like the time the bad cop had a pretty nice and relaxing conversation with us during one night training.

Hmm, maybe that is true for the ghost story they told us at last parade about our bunk. Spooked one of my bunkmate real bad. He was putting up some paper talisman just to be sure.

From a few pages back: I don't actually know that much about the War of 1812, beyond what I've read in novels about Wooden Ships and Iron Men. Care to elaborate? Sounds interesting.

The link Sabre's Edge posted here goes into a lot more detail than I'm willing to type up, but the long and short of it was that their logistics were shit, the state militias were full of political officers whose positions in the civilian world were the only real reason they were officers, and the troops were more often about being Barracks Room Lawyers about their term of service than being actually trained and carrying out their duties until things were actually done. Some state militias were good enough to be a general credit to their home state, but that required generals who would hammer them into shape and didn't worry so much about the political "fallout" of hurting the feelings of those whose families back home who had a grip on the political levers of power.

Although a fictional work, Eric Flint's The Rivers of War (paperback titled as 1812: The Rivers of War) does touch on some of the issues with militia troops during the War of 1812. Whatever you think of Flint's politics (self-identified socialist; not exactly my thing, though that's not relevant to this thread in general) he doesn't slouch on research for his writings.

edited 27th Jul '14 7:03:27 AM by Nohbody

Hence, why the eventually French aero-terrestre strategy in Indochina is generally considered to be an example of how to utterly fail at counter-insurgency; it's one thing to use pockets in desperation against circumstances out of one's control, but, as you pointed out earlier, basing an entire COIN strategy on luring the Viet Minh into pocket battles and bleeding them out from there is "hardly the mark of sanity". Coupled with incompetent intelligence services failing to take heed of the huge numbers of Chinese and Soviet gear flowing into the Viet Minh from China, along with rather shabby perimeter security regarding the punchbowl of mountains around Dien Bien Phu, and you've got the seeds sowed for the French (many of whom weren't really French in the first place) to reap one of the greatest military disasters in modern history.

That, and their only competent general died of cancer.

Historically, French military history has always been littered with a rather sad tradition of having decently capable tactical and operational officers who inevitably keep end up being screwed over by their superiors up top on the strategic level. One of the advantages that the French forces possessed over their Viet Minh opponents was that most of their ground level officers were already battle-hardened and experienced from World War II in the first place, contrasted with the latter whose officer corps largely consisted of willing and devoted, but militarily inexperienced leaders.

Taira: Why would I faint? From my total lack of surprise? I will still take that beer though.

@ 1812: I guess the Americans were lucky that they had to deal with our second-line forces, since the front-line were rather busy with the Napoleonic Wars. The US Navy wouldn't have stood a chance against the full-on British Line of Battle.