General military questions thread

Re McNamara's low IQ recruits - I've seen it argued that it was not a bad idea per se but botched. There are many tasks not requiring intelligence nor initiative in the military - putting those boys there would had been a Good Thing to everybody concerned. Shelves in warehouses get stocked, potatoes get peeled, helicopters get waxed etc., while better quality recruits go to where they should be - like the PBI.
 
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Buba said:
Re McNamara's low IQ recruits - I've seen it argued that it was not a bad idea per se but botched. There are many tasks which do not require neither intelligence nor initiative in the military - putting those boys there would had been a Good Thing to everybody concerned. Shelves in warehouses get stocked/potatoes get peeled, helicopters get waxed etc., while better quality recruits go to where they should be - like the PBI.
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That makes sense. Let them into the US military but also do cognitive sorting for military jobs afterwards. It makes perfect sense. Who specifically did you see make this argument, though?
 
I mean,
We have fuel people whose whole job is to out fuel in the vics, water purification people, simple Cooks even.
Truck drivers.
 
Zachowon said:
Truck drivers.
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I'd draw a line there :)
I'd prefer 20+ ton vehicles near me not being driven by people who have to rediscover which tap delivers cold water every morning :)
A ride-on grass mower (and painting the lawn green afterward, as is the Army Way) - OK. But don't give them 18 wheelers ...
 
Buba said:
I'd draw a line there :)
I'd prefer 20+ ton vehicles near me not being driven by people who have to rediscover which tap delivers cold water every morning :)
A ride-on grass mower (and painting the lawn green afterward, as is the Army Way) - OK. But don't give them 18 wheelers ...
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True.
But yeah
 
Question - what did the USA do with the several thousand Hotchkiss 1914 machineguns in 8mm French it bought for the AEF?
 
Buba said:
Question - what did the USA do with the several thousand Hotchkiss 1914 machineguns in 8mm French it bought for the AEF?
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If they're still in storage they'll probably be sent to Ukraine soon.
 
Question for you guys:

WolfBear said:
Which wars resembled trench warfare? Some examples off the top of my head:

*Eastern theater of the American Civil War
*Western Front of World War I
*Iran-Iraq War
*Donbass War
*Russo-Ukrainian War

What else?
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For some reason I feel like Austria-Hungary's war with Italy during World War I doesn't get enough attention. It was one of the most fortified parts of Europe in the pre-World War I era, I would presume:


Settore_Dolomitico1.JPG


There were a whopping twelve Battles of the Isonzo:


Must feel really sad for Italians bleeding so much a century ago so that they could complete the task of gathering Italia irredenta! :(
 
Buba said:
A usually sensible poster on either on AH-com or on SB. I think ... I'm old and I've been in the internets for too long ...
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Do you remember the online location of the relevant post?

Anyway, another question:

WolfBear said:
Which quick wars were there with a notable historical impact? I can think of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, but which other wars would qualify for this? One could think of the Western Front campaign in WWII in 1940, but that was just one campaign in a much larger and longer war.

I want to focus on countries that were roughly peer competitors to one another rather than grossly mismatched, such as with the 1983 US invasion of Grenada or the 1990-1991 Gulf War, where the power mismatch between the warring sides was extraordinarily uneven.
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There are two options here, either units are declared high-readiness, despite not being or it will take couple of decades to reach the goal.
 
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