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[mainiac]

Lancaster laws start to apply

Lancaster laws never even applied to battleships, let alone ground combat.  The variance out outcomes is way too high plus there is tons of autocorrelation.

[Parsely]

Lancaster laws start to apply

Lancaster laws never even applied to battleships, let alone ground combat.  The variance out outcomes is way too high plus there is tons of autocorrelation.

*Lanchester laws

[mainiac]

I've been making that mistake for years. 

[Erkki]

No. Not just no, but hell no. Joe shows up out if OSUT and he's still pretty much completely useless. If you're *really* lucky, he might have learned enough to learn, but that's questionable, especially these days.

You and a great many of worlds militaries have a very different opinion on what is enough of training then... Or the material you have trained has been sub par somehow.

Perhaps in the big picture it isnt overly useful it is to give very advanced training to most infantry.

Theres advantages to being able to mobilize a large force within weeks... Conscripts or not. Especially when its their war and they're willing to fight.

People say "it was a peacekeeping operation" like folks didn't suffer, fight, and die in that war. Forget the politics. To me the phrase belittles the actions of those men who did their best to keep one another alive out there.

I didnt and that wasn't my point... Taleban didn't field motor rifle brigades let alone an air force. Infantry numbers may get inflated when the enemy is weak and few and you mostly need presence.

[Culise]

I've been making that mistake for years. 

Same here, so you're not alone. >_<

[Strife26]

You're going to want to look at combat action badge plus the combat infantry badge, then. Lots of people without 11B jobs did things in an identical manner.

No. Not just no, but hell no. Joe shows up out if OSUT and he's still pretty much completely useless. If you're *really* lucky, he might have learned enough to learn, but that's questionable, especially these days.

You and a great many of worlds militaries have a very different opinion on what is enough of training then... Or the material you have trained has been sub par somehow.

Perhaps in the big picture it isnt overly useful it is to give very advanced training to most infantry.

 

No. Not just no, but obviously no. The job of a modern infantryman isn't something simple. Korea War era superior numbers in wave tactics is roughly equal in usefulness to jumping back to horse cavalry.



But it's the armchair general thread, so believe what you'd like.

[Erkki]

I never claimed it to be easy. I very well know that it isn't. But it isn't rocket science either.

When you're short on money and need to fill brigade after brigade just to secure national sovereignty you cant afford to fix every mistake and train perfect men, especially knowing that infantry small arms will only inflict small part enemy casualties. Not that infantry training isnt important for every infantryman's life, but the big picture weights the most. A year of training for the Joe Average still gets you much more than the average Taliban/ISIS jihadist or 1940s Chinese\Soviet\Korean penal company conscript in a bayonet human wave attack. Unless if your training program is incompetent and the trained unmotivated and unfit. Not Joe Averages willing to fight for their nation.

It cost the US what, on the average 2 million a year, per each man deployed in Afghanistan. They really should have been be able to do that cheaper; I know ours were there for fraction of that, partially because most of them weren't professionals but reservists. And likely did Taliban hunting just as well.

[mainiac]

Conscription isn't going to make it cheaper to ship supplies around the world.  It isn't going to make precision munitions cheaper.  It isn't going to reduce legacy healthcare costs for soldiers (to the contrary it will make them balloon.)

[Erkki]

Conscription isn't going to make it cheaper to ship supplies around the world.  It isn't going to make precision munitions cheaper.  It isn't going to reduce legacy healthcare costs for soldiers (to the contrary it will make them balloon.)

Please read: "partially". Our presence was about 250,000 usd/person/year. No missiles in that figure, but should one really need those anti guerrilla warfare other than for lack of better tools?

Why would conscription make legacy healthcare costs balloon?

[mainiac]

No missiles in that figure, but should one really need those anti guerrilla warfare other than for lack of better tools?

Conscription is going to reduce the need for indirect fire?  I dont think that would be a really popular strategy.

Why would conscription make legacy healthcare costs balloon?

More soldiers=more vets getting healthcare benefits.

[Erkki]

No missiles in that figure, but should one really need those anti guerrilla warfare other than for lack of better tools?

Conscription is going to reduce the need for indirect fire?  I dont think that would be a really popular strategy.

Not what I said again. I was thinking about hunting Talibans in the mountains with attack helicopters and jets.

Why would conscription make legacy healthcare costs balloon?

More soldiers=more vets getting healthcare benefits.

Non issue for nations where healthcare benefits are exactly the same for basically everyone. And especially for those who also after a lost war wont be paying healthcare benefits to anyone ever again:  I dont think you are at all thinking about a situation where the potential opponents would be much stronger. For nations where the military and its capabilities exist first and foremost as a deterrent, theres little point in thinking about minor issues after a won or lost war, if accounting for them reduces its capabilities. This is the reason I thought that for example joining the Ottawa anti-personnel mine ban convention was a bad, bad idea(plus, it doesnt ban mine cluster bombs/missiles/rockets, because anti-personnel mines installed one by one are so much more dangerous to civilians than clusters shot out of an artillery piece or dropped from angels 20, right?).

Buck for bang in some arbitrary combat capability versus reference values is one thing, basic training(and advanced to key parts) and being able to arm and equipment a large portion of the population another. Stalin could ask, how many divisions does this professional army of Sweden's have?

[Tack]

edit: Hmm, I think you didnt comment on the professional army debate.

I did, however I was playing with the original argument in the thread before we sent the discussion this way.

However in the same sense that foxholes were the 'fix' to the overpowered tank push, there's so many different things which could end the work of conscripts, and most of those would require surgical strikes.
I'm not saying that one Special forces soldier could rout a company (although it's happened before), but for things like gaining air superiority, decapitating the army or sighting in long-range bombardment - all things which are less force multipliers and more battlefield control - you'd rather trust the small, elite force to do it.

[Erkki]

I did, however I was playing with the original argument in the thread before we sent the discussion this way.

However in the same sense that foxholes were the 'fix' to the overpowered tank push, there's so many different things which could end the work of conscripts, and most of those would require surgical strikes.
I'm not saying that one Special forces soldier could rout a company (although it's happened before), but for things like gaining air superiority, decapitating the army or sighting in long-range bombardment - all things which are less force multipliers and more battlefield control - you'd rather trust the small, elite force to do it.

Conscription army doesn't rule out using professional soldiers. Nor does conscript army equal massed foot infantry. It's not a game where one decides between getting a plane and 11 infantry off the shelf. Professional career officers fly fighter aircraft just about everywhere, but less demanding tasks need to be filled too. Professional officers may also lead(platoons and higher).

In the end it also doesn't matter how well one trained once hes at the receiving end of an artillery barrage. Nobody but Best Korea perhaps will start a war and not think it'll be won, and since wars are horrible, its best be so well prepared that none will ever think they'll win something facing you.

Usually discussions on conscription revolve around fairness; how it is felt to limit personal freedoms or how it at least is unequal within a society way or another(such as, only males get conscripted).

[Strife26]

It matters quite an lot, actually. Both the odds of being bracketed by that artillery, surviving it, surviving it and still able to complete a mission. Much less the counter battery work.

Can you run a conscript army with professional ncos and officers? Sure. Hell, the soviets did it largely without even the professional nco part. That just means that your leadership gets to spend their time babysitting instead of doing actual leadership.

[Sheb]

Again, it depends on what kind of training your conscripts get (At one extreme, conscripted legionaries served 20 years), and what the alternative is. The US got the luxury of having two oceans between it an any threat, so it can take its time creating a proffessional army if needed. If Finland is attacked, it would at most have a few weeks to react.