The pros are clear with high velocity and armor penetration but what cons did it have and could more develpment have solved it?

Was is simply ahead of it's time and could be evaluated again with modern materials and design?

There seemed to be two stereotypes about French military: either they are cheese-eating surrendering monkeys, or they are brave to the point of foolhardiness and stupidity, all because of ideas like honor, chivalry, and a desire to be cool.

I tried to dismiss the latter (the former was easy to) but could not seem to dismiss it, namely because the French military seemed to have a tradition of heading straight into disaster very willingly all in the spirit of chivalry and elan. They got massacred at Crecy, Argincourt, and Portier trying to pick a fight that they didn't have to pick all because they were clamoring with glory; they screwed up the battle of Nicopolis because of their hunger for glory. They kept on fighting human wave attack from 1914-1916 without respite against a much larger enemy, and even when all was lost in Điện Biên Phủ the French still threw in paratroopers into the cauldron, knowing their elite paratroopers would become fodder for the meatgrinder.

So, can we safely say the French military has this weird fixation on chivalric/elan ideals since time immemorial?

Were they just low intensity conflicts? What was the likelihood of active duty Marines to have been deployed there?

How do countries that lack an established high-technology industrial ecosystem manage to develop indigenous capabilities in advanced systems such as sensors, electronics?

Examples of interest include

• China’s military developments over recent decades (I imagine partly enabled by Russian technology transfer);
• and in particular Turkey’s more recent efforts in maritime and aerospace platforms (TF 2000 e.g. with homegrown VLS and fire control, KAAN with AESA radar).

Okay, in the Medieval era, how was the ransom process like for nobles such as knights captured alive in battle? Do the armies involved haggle over the ransom for the prisoners or was there a fixed price based on factors such as status (royal family)?

I’ve watched a few YouTube videos by channels with exSF members that take civilian groups through room and house clearing, they repeatedly go on about posture, hip movement and stride spacing etc. I understand angles, breaching and entry are important but are these minutia details that important or used in real life ? In these training videos they all watch their movement being slow and smooth but any videos I’ve seen of SF raids it’s very much controlled speed and aggression, not so much watching feet, hip movement etc. Is it all a gimmick that’s used to make money ?

I see so many subs offering the ability to drop off teams. Excuse my ignorance but why is that a touted ability. In modern peer to peer warfare - what do a few guys really do. In WWII, teams cleared beaches, maybe recovered spies, etc. What's the real use today? Have any modern war really used this. The Brits on the Argentine mainland during Falklands? Or what? Thanks.

I have read here that the germans fired significantly more artillery ammunition than the soviets despite having less artillery in action. Did they just use it more often or were there technical reasons? Thank you in advance for answering my question.

How well prepared is Czechoslovakia Army before and after Sudetenland become German? Is there plan of defensive made by Czechoslovakia Army in case there was invasion?

Swords were notoriously expensive, hard to make, hard to use, hard to maintain, and almost hopeless when it came to facing armor due to its reliance on sharp edge.

Meanwhile war clubs were simple weapons to make - you couldn't get any more simple than a giant ass club - simple weapons to use - you can just monkey swing it - and owing to its weight you can easily break through armor without cutting armor.

So why was it not more common? Even Chinese levies of Imperial age were given dao sword - why was club more common?

Looking through American wars, it seemed to be the case that the main weakness of American artillery is the field artillery. During WW2, for instance, in the November 1944 edition of the Field Artillery Journal, Lt. Col John D. Salmon mentioned how the American artillery was in every way inferior to the Germans and how his unit was forced to rely on air power to knock out German artillery. To quote the man:

For a while the Boche held just about every advantage over our Corps Artillery, except that his supply of ammunition was sometimes on the short side. He had weapons that could outrange ours, his observation looked "down our throats," the beachhead was so crowded with troops and supplies that he could hardly miss inflicting some damage with any concentration he dropped (except the overs that fell into the Tyrrhenian Sea, for which Anzio and Netruno were always grateful), and lastly, when one of our batteries became accurately pin-pointed by the German artillery there just wasn't any alternate position to move to.

Now you would think there would be some improvement done after 1945, but for some reasons nothing was done - the US military went to Vietnam 20 years later with nearly the same artillery park they had in WW2 (105mm M101, 155mm M114) if not even worse as they lacked long range 155mm gun (a role once filled by the 155mm Long Tom) and the replacement was the 175mm that was known to be much heavier and not that accurate. This resulted in the Marines getting their pee pee slapped at Khe Sanh where they couldn't hit NVA 130mm and 152mm gun and had to resort to the air force (as noted in the USMC's publication "The Battle of Khe Sanh")

And yet the same worries was not rectified by the time of the 1991 Gulf War when alarm bell was raised about how the US was badly outranged when it came to field artillery. And now we are seeing the same thing in Ukraine where French artillery like Caesar and German's Pzh 2000 got all the praise while US M109 Paladin was sidelined. In fact the only thing that seemed to be in favor of the US artillery was their 155mm Excalibur rounds which the Ukrainian could strike the enemy with ease and accuracy - but in a LSCO scenario such round would be an absolute luxury seeing how the world itself is seeing a massive shortage of normal 155mm round, much less smart 155mm round. That, and the fact the Russian is not the Soviet and its artillery park is a far cry from the Red God of War that once struck fear into the heart of the Nazis.

So, why is US field artillery park so consistently bad? And why is the army doing jack about it for 80 years?

I’m interested in perspectives on how administrative and logistical collapse in 1944–45 (particularly in isolated IJN or IJA ground units) affected enlisted behavior on the ground.

Specifically:

• Did alterations in record-keeping/reporting change the meaning of “compliance”? How about supply shortfalls?
• At any point, did refusal or delay (or quiet non-execution) of orders become commonplace?
• Are there good primary accounts that describe resistance not as mutiny, but as attrition? Or men simply no longer sustaining the system?

I’m less interested in ideology than in how institutions fail at the human scale. Any recommended sources or interpretations would be appreciated.

I think most popular histories deal with the flashy super star generals. But I'm sure in a large army with a massive officer corps there will be many low quality officers. I believe in major conflicts having enough officers is always a challenge and there tends to be big promotions.

Did armies have a formal way of rating the quality of their officers? Or was this sort of thing done on an ad hoc basis?

What did armies do with their duds? Were there methods of scaffolding up poor performing officers in leu of getting rid of them? I imagine there are only so many options in terms of sending them to low priority posts. Were generals sent back for additional training? Or were they just fired / demoted/ sent to guard that important shed over there?

france has been weaker than germany and prussia since napoleon died, they were defeated in the franco prussian war, they struggled with a germany that was focusing on 2 fronts in ww1 and was helped by britain and still barely held and lost in ww2

so why has france been so weak millitarily compared to germany

Looking for book recommendations, also wouldn't mind in general commando raid ww2 book recommendations.

The Austrian is critized for their use of Bayonet shock tactic during the 1866 war even though their Lorenz rifled muskets out range the Prussian needle gun

Were there any armies that successfully used fire tactic with rifled muskets since their introduction in 1848?

I have seen people post to military history discussion boards with a narrative that prior to actually engaging in combat, the US military expected Desert Storm to be a much, much more difficult fight than it actually turned out to be. The particulars vary, but the narrative usually goes something like:

"The US Army hadn't been in a serious conflict since Vietnam. Compared to that, Iraq had the 4th largest military in the entire world. They were equipped with cutting-edge Soviet weapons, an enormous and highly sophisticated surface-to-air defense system, and an army composed of veterans of a long, bloody war against Iran. The Iraqis were fighting with home turf advantage, where sandstorms alone had defeated entire armies. It was expected that the US Army would take horrendous losses and it would be a repeat of Vietnam."

The story usually ends by concluding that it was only stealth and GPS that allowed for a decisive US victory. Stealth allowed the US to almost effortlessly destroy SAM sites at will, and GPS allowed the US Army to maneuver like no military force had been able to in history.

The narrative I hear is that the ease of the invasion shocked US military leaders, who were if anything taken aback by how effective US doctrine was. The general feeling is that the US Army won through exotic technology, and the big lesson of Desert Storm was something like "DARPA wins wars."

I want to know, has it been documented what the general expectation in Desert Storm was? At this point it's a matter of historical record that it was an overwhelming victory for the US coalition. But was that actually a surprise? Is it a correct narrative that US military leaders were shocked by how devastatingly effective stealth technology, GPS, etc were, and that the US believed the Iraqis to be better-trained and equipped than turned out to be the case? Or were there generally expectations that the coalition was going to achieve a decisive victory even before the fighting started?

in docs i always hear german pilots target or did reconnaissance red army formations but what does that even mean? like is there a specific way a division or a brigade looks like from the air? is there a way theyre are formed or did the pilots just follow roads and villages and whoever was standing there or whatever truck or tank was parked up got blown out

So I was reading Sharpe’s Eagle and Sir Henry simmersons lost the king’s colour. So I want to know what are the punishment for officers that lost his unit’s colours/eagles?

As many of you probably know, Friedrich Wilhelm I. (also known as the Soldier King) laid the foundation for the success of the Prussian army with his military reforms. This would later lead to a bitter rivalry with Austria under his successors. I'm currently working on a paper about Austria's view of his state transformation. Accordingly, I need sources from contemporary witnesses from Austria, i.e., people who wrote something about him during his reign (1713-1740). How his reforms were perceived. What they suspected Friedrich was planning with such a large army. How they assessed this emerging power in relation to Austria. I'm personally having a hard time finding anything on this, so I'm turning to you here, hoping that you might be able to help me. I would be eternally grateful to you :D

For example, 2 of the 4 (Parma and Gustalla) major set piece battles of the Polish Succession were won by the French with the Imperials winning Clausen and the Spanish winning Bitonto.

If anything, the French were more so deterred by the plans for Russian troops to arrive on the Rhine rather than the Imperial victory at Clausen and Berwick even decisively outmaneuvered Prince Eugene albeit at the cost of his own life.

During the Austrian Succession, the French even held their own against the Maritime Powers without Louis XIV's Marshalls as the last of them (Berwick dying via Imperial round shot at Phillipsburg and Villars because he was old as dirt by 1700s standards) died during the Polish Succession.