The Military Thread

"Like. I guess the question is "how difficult is it to properly supply your troops"? "

Depending upon what you mean by "properly" it's either "it just takes money" or "impossible."

Edited by DeMarquis on May 20th 2022 at 8:22:51 AM

"Ensure everybody has their standard kit and there's a reserve of items to replace damaged or destroyed material so you don't have to go to Amazon"?

Edited by fredhot16 on May 20th 2022 at 5:42:01 AM

I know a person who had to do it for his unit, they needed a part to fix the plane.... the government wouldn't issue them the part because they had already used there yearly quota....

Base nearby had the part, there planes were fine but they wouldn't trade the part.

....

So he was told by his CO to go "acquire" it, "we all work for the same government any way"

That quote explains why that tripped me up initially: you're part of the same bloody military, what's with this "unofficial requisition" from your own goddamn guys?

Even then that equipment was bought from home. A knight didn’t get provided with his equipment by the king, he had to secure it himself. Now a knight would generally come from a noble family so have the means to do that, but it was still the requirement.

Soldiers from the commoner class had to do the same. In medieval England one of the responsibilities of a freeman (a peasant who wasn’t a serf and could thus move around freely) was that he had to have his own weapons and armour ready should the local lord call him up to defend the village/town (the serfs weren’t expected to fight because they were the main farmers).

It’s only with the development of firearms that we started to actually see governments regularly issuing weapons to their soldiers, since then the kit provided has expanded, but never as quickly as the kit needed has.

Because you need the shit and they won’t play ball. The official way to deal with the situation would be to find the common command chain link and either escalate to get them involved or threaten to get them involved. But that’s a risky play, because that link could be pretty senior and generals don’t like having to play quartermaster because their troops are being pissy with each other, so when they do have to play quartermaster they may lash out at everyone involved.

On a good day when you need something and someone else has it they’ll loan it to you in exchange for a promise that once your logistical are sorted you’ll settle the tab, but that’s something a lot easier to do in peacetime logistical issues rather than wartime ones.

Edited by Silasw on May 20th 2022 at 1:54:06 PM

That sounds like the equivalent of your sibling not giving you the Gameboy to play and you have to find your mom.

But it turns out she's super tired and stressed so she has little patience for this petty bullshit and just takes away the Gameboy from the both of you.

Edited by fredhot16 on May 20th 2022 at 5:59:34 AM

It’s basically that but on a much larger scale. Imagine a city mayor having to get involved in a dispute between two neighbours over driveway access, but it’s military logistics and everyone is being shot at.

Alternatively, something that happens very frequently in wartime is for a brand new piece of equipment to be intended to be mass issued across the military, but units are deployed so rapidly that they are not issued the equipment before being sent out to the front.

In World War II, your average American soldier embattled in Europe or the Pacific was armed with a bolt-action Springfield instead of the iconic Garand which only became available in large enough numbers to the troops towards the end of the war in 1943-onwards.

In Vietnam, the US manufacturers actually managed to quickly resolve the many faults of the first generation of M16 rifles, but most American troops already in Vietnam had already been issued the very faulty versions before they could be replaced.

I would presume something similar occurred on the 2000s with telescopic optics for US troops' rifles. Plans were made to have been issued to every soldier or Marine before being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan, but the troops had to be deployed quickly before they could be fully issued them.

Corruption is also a pretty universal feature of warfare, going back to the dawn of organised state armies. When you hear "military" and "corruption" in the US context, you'd probably think of the rather genteel sort, where defence companies would lobby lawmakers to award them extravagant contracts. In some other countries, it's a lot more blatant: you join the military (sometimes even bribing recruiters for the privilege) so you can siphon off the money being moved around, take part in various for-profit schemes (ranging from above-board hotel and entertainment businesses run by PLA commanders in China to gemstone mining in Myanmar), secure extra privileges for your family and boss people around in your civilian life.

Governments do regularly order large batches of surplus equipment so their militaries could readily replace losses, or equip new recruits in the event of an expansion. But these schemes are also an easy way for commanders and civilian officials alike to make funds disappear, making them magnets for corruption. Poorly-paid troops might steal things to sell on the side, and back-channel theft and transfers of parts would render units a lot less well-equipped than they appear on paper. As the president of a country, for instance, you might be assured by your military leaders that they have enough surplus armoured vehicles in storage to raise a new brigade if a full-scale war ever breaks out. But until a war does start and you need those vehicles, you might not realise that half of them had their wiring stripped off and sold by the warehouse guards, while the other half were abandoned in a facility that had gotten flooded due to a leaky roof, leaving their interiors too rusted to function. Or that your NCOs had been making their recruits pay for equipment that were supposed to be issued to them.

Finally, even in a very well-equipped military, personnel (especially from "elite" units with more disciplinary leeway) might opt to buy commercial equipment if they feel that it's superior to the standard-issue stuff (or just fashionable). This could range from gloves to multitool knives to GPS receivers to all kinds of weapon accessories.

I think that the "Adopt A Sniper" program in the early years of the US war in Iraq fell into this category: it originally started in private correspondences between US military markspeople and their friends in law enforcement, many of whom had prior military backgrounds. They deemed the specialised weapon optics employed by many local SWAT teams to be superior to the ones issued to military snipers, and soon came up with "shopping lists" of non-standard equipment to send to the frontlines — which quickly grew into large fundraisers pushed by Young Republicans on uni campuses. The widespread adoption of weapon optics by regular infantry units was an entirely different affair and came slightly later, far as I could tell — in 2003, they were still quite exclusive to "elite" units.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on May 20th 2022 at 6:46:49 AM

Wait, how the hell do you do pull that off?

Edit: @Silasw Actually, now I'm curious, what sort of punishments could that hypothetical general institute to everybody?

Edited by fredhot16 on May 20th 2022 at 8:33:20 AM

Well, again, this is why Good Quartermasters are valued. Because they know how to get their hands on things, or know what strings to pull for someone else to get their hands on it.

A fair amount of their job is also negotiating with other Quartermasters too directly, rather than going through their C.O.s, who are sometimes likely to be a lot less diplomatic due to, say, rivalries from officer training. This is actually basically the role what Legionnaires like James Vasquez, or folks like Rip Rawlings and so on did, or are still doing. Lot of long trips to Poland and such to get shit for units they were attached to, or in communications with for stuff like Red Dot Sights, Night Vision Goggles, Ballistic Vests, Proper Ammo for rifles they were given (JV's unit was mostly 5.56 users, but a few were screwed and had 7.62, which they only had a few clips of each) and so on and so forth. The DD Twitter Space bit even mentioned one of their guys actually flew all the way back to the US just to pick up gear for them.

This is also mainly why groups like Ukraine Aid Operations and such were formed as fast as they were, to assist with lessening the Logistics clusterfuck that a War always causes. And why Western Aid Shipments are so important.

Edited by Pendrake on May 20th 2022 at 10:22:46 AM

https://mobile.twitter.com/RALee85/status/1527424985580687365

Crowdfunding for the Russians and DPR fighters.

I'm reminded of a US officer who found himself as both the commanding officer of a company and the acting quartermaster. One day, as the CO, he made a request for extra supplies. When the request came to the quartermaster's desk he, as the acting quartermaster, rejected it since he felt the CO - himself - didn't need it. As CO he sent the request again with a protest, and as quartermaster he rejected it again with a detailed explanation as to why. An explanation he was writing to himself.

Taking away resources as punishment, stunting the career progression of specific individuals, just being a shitty boss generally. Pretty similar stuff to what most senior leaders in large organisations can do to their subordinates if they piss them off.

Heh. Which is precisely why a Quartermaster usually tends to be A Staff or Master Sergeant, or Petty Officer. Usually because they tend to know what the Troops actually need, not what an officer thinks they need.

You tell them to pay up and threaten them with punishment if they don't. Or, if you want to put a veneer of officialdom over it, give them an invoice. Recruits would have to be aware that it's illegal and have the guts to talk back to have a hope of resisting — and if you're a dirty officer or NCO in the sort of military where this kind of thing happens, you could probably just pass your superiors some kickback to keep their mouths shut.

I feel like the overall message I'm getting is despite the military's focus on efficiency and orderliness, it's also a very messy place.

In recognition of that, happy Armed Forces Day!

Edited by fredhot16 on May 21st 2022 at 10:26:19 AM

Just to avoid any confusion, Quartermaster isn’t usually an individual term or rank in western militaries. For example in the US Army there’s the Quartermaster Corps, which is one of the Army’s three sustainment branches alongside the Ordinance Corps and Transport Corps. The seniormost officer from the Quartermaster Corps on any given installation is sometimes called “Quartermaster” colloquially, but generally the term refers to an entire unit with its own command structure, usually serving a larger formation like a BCT or working on an installation, rather than an individual within a unit who operates under that command structure.

This changes for navies, because they have a different heritage associated with the term, but that’s something specific to them.

This dude admitted on his own social media that he was never in the legion. I’m begging you, please stop hyping this fraud. It’s getting ridiculous.

He still worked alongside some of them, has been mentioned as such by them, and was by Kyiv and in the Donbas and located to there despite your claim he never left Lviv.

On an unrelated note, a notable loss for the Russians today, after literally bragging yesterday about using them: https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1528046054150754307

Guess they forgot Geolocation is a thing, and what happened to the Saratov. And it cost them one of their 40 active 204mm Tyulpan Siege Mortars.

Said locates were well after the fact, and only when the area that was left was clear. so Op Sec was still observed.

As for the Tyulpan getting blown up, it's pretty clear Russia reporters didn't learn from what happened last time (The Saratov being bragged about in Berdyansk and subsequently having its load of ammunition detonated by Ukrainian Munitions).

Edited by Pendrake on May 21st 2022 at 1:01:04 AM

Isn't this what people call OPSEC (which applies not only to Russians but also to tropers here...)

All of his posts geolocate him to the Lviv area. By his own admission he did not sign an AFU contract, so the chances of him being involved with any AFU supply operations are slim to none, as 8 years of irregular warfare have made the AFU very strict about not blending official and unofficial combatants. The chances of him having seen combat are similarly low.

You are carrying water for a fraud. Please stop. At this point it’s frankly getting ridiculous, the issues with this guy have been pointed out in multiple threads by myself and several other tropers and yet you continue to insist on spreading his lies. This is also not the first fake volunteer you’ve promoted.

Edited by archonspeaks on May 21st 2022 at 3:46:27 AM

Man this thread has been racing over the past few months. Hopefully I'm not retreading any long-dead topics, but I wanted to reply to the comment a few pages back about how folks would view the 2003 Iraq invasion today, and I do recall some of the commentary at the time (I was a college student at the time). This wasn't the smartphone age, but it was definitely the digital camera and multi-band cell phone with international SIM card age, so information was still traveling at a quick pace compared to previous decades:

The improvised armor added to US vehicles was called "Hillbilly Armor," often consisting of plates of metal welded or bolted on. Quality supposedly varied depending on the quality of material and attachments used. Poor choices in either would supposedly just mean more shrapnel being sent flying into the vehicle. A lot of the armored vehicles used in the US today, to include the MRAPs, are a direct response to attempts to make field-improvements to the protection of thin-skinned vehicles back then.

There was also a big deal made about soldiers using cell phones or those cheap store-bought handheld radios (which had a limited pre-selection of frequencies, no options for encryption, typically shitty antennae, and of course now way to directly link up with military comm nets) to make up for lack of sufficient quantities of proper radio gear.

This was also the period of soldiers buying their own body armor due to not trusting the issued gear. Some of the armor they bought instead of course wasn't that great either, and there was the whole Dragon Scale controversy (supposedly the Dragon Scale armor was banned by the DOD either because it made the Interceptor armor look bad, with the official reason being it suffered quality-control problems, especially in hot environments).

What I'm saying is that the US is not immune to such logistical or PR problems during large-scale operations, but I'd also point out that US vets being familiar with such problems does not mean they don't know what they're talking about when they poke fun at the Russians for going through similar problems and struggling as a result.

tl;dr: If you ever see a GWOT vet snark about "going to war with the army you have, not the army you want," they are 80% referring to the early years of the Iraq invasion, riffing off of an infamous quote from Donald Rumsfeld about many of the above challenges the US military faced.

Edited by AFP on May 21st 2022 at 5:06:01 AM

Well, it's not that surprising given there's, you know, the largest active conflict in Europe since WW 2 going on.

With probably the most international partners and variety of Military Equipment seen since then as well.

Speaking of them: https://www.dailysabah.com/turkey/investigations/russian-journalists-illegally-filming-turkish-drone-production-center-detained

Probably not one of Russia's wisest moves, when Turkey's the main roadblock to Finland and Sweden joining NATO. Though also understandably, given Turkey recently made a show of flying two of the TB 2's big sister, the Akinci, to Georgia, possibly as a delivery, whom Russia is currently trying to annex part of, in a somewhat similar situation to Ukraine in 2014.

Edited by Pendrake on May 22nd 2022 at 5:50:36 AM

AFP: Interceptor vs Dragonskin is a blatant case of corruption in military procurement and the subsequent mess of lack of access to adequate body armor and repeated mistrust of said armor.

I recall that the manufacturer of Interceptor and US Army PEO were the ones set on deciding which vest went forward. Not only is that shady as hell but there was so much doublespeak and questionable "evidence" from the Army that someone should have pulled the plug on Interceptor. The same said armor which had massive amounts of serious and lethal manufacturing flaws in multiple armor lots. This included things like the US Army deliberately deciding not to do tests on Interceptor lots manufactured from 2004-2006.

The IG tore through US Army testing and quality control for their deliberate failures...five years after the fact. This turned into a repeated problem with numerous contracts never receiving proper testing by the US Army at all and what testing was done was done outside parameters required for testing. Interceptor is long gone its CEO got Point Blank its contract in prison for massive fraud relating to interceptor and insider trading, and the numbers of military brass that facilitated this magically faced no repercussions despite the fact it led to injury and death for US troops.

I don't know about you but I wouldn't trust anything the US Army has to say on the issue of body armor in that era given the amount of evidence of fraud and negligence.

There is a really good reason US Troops should be skeptical of equipment to varying degrees.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on May 22nd 2022 at 3:51:27 AM

A little late, but here are some excerpts from the kamikaze pilot diaries that Imca talked about earlier (collated by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney).