Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Cheesecake]

What were and are some of the tactics and strategies used by the military today? Broadly, I mean. Like, absolutely anything, naval or air combat, artillery or guerrilla, etc. Just general descriptions or even links are fine

Mostly for writing purposes; hard for me to write about warfare without understanding this.

[i2amroy]

If you're looking for a simple overview of different tactics that have been used then the Wikipedia List of Military Tactics is a good place to start reading. Not everything is still in use, obviously, and some of the pages are rather brief on the specifics of different tactics, but it's a good place to start. For a more bit abstract view of the topic, I suggest you check out the Marine Corp's Tactics manual, which covers a lot of the exact reasoning behind tactics (if not the exact maneuvers in detail). For more specifics on exact maneuvers you probably want to check out various military manuals, such as this Marine Rifle Squad Field Manual, this Army Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad Field Manual, or this Manual for Marine Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain. A lot of it won't necessarily be applicable to what exactly you are trying to learn, being probably too specific for the generalities you are looking for, but if you want specifics they're the place to go, and you can find quite a few more that have actually been published by the military at places like this.

Beyond that the basic ideas of studying warfare pretty much involve looking at scenario after scenario that have been performed in the past (history, yay!) and seeing what they did that worked and what they did that didn't. To quote the earlier linked Tactics manual from the Marines:

The leader's skill is essentially one of pattern recognition, the ability, after only seeing a few pieces of the puzzle, to fill in the rest of the picture completely.

If you are really interested and have access to a library you might also want to see about reading as many of the books on this list (note: it's a .doc download link, so don't freak out) as you feel necessary; it's the current list of the top 100 books for West Point Officers in training to read, and includes many a book on both tactics and strategies in use throughout both history and today.

[Strife26]

Don't be identified by the enemy.

See the other guy before he sees you, kill him.

Fix the enemy with support by fire, maneuver a flanking element, then kill him.

All modern ground combat in three sentences.

Any specific topic that your particularly interested in?

[Helgoland]

PTW, I wanna hear Uncle Strife's stories!

*sits at Strife's feet, comfortably close to the fireplace, with a cup of cocoa and an excited expression on his face*

[Cheesecake]

Thank you both! I keep this thread bookmarked for whenever I need it. Thanks for the wealth of information

[Strife26]

Am I telling stories? I'll totally ramble for untold pages if I get started, probably meshed with surprisingly relevant tactical, leadership, and tanking advice.

[Cheesecake]

Am I telling stories? I'll totally ramble for untold pages if I get started, probably meshed with surprisingly relevant tactical, leadership, and tanking advice.

I'd like to hear a story too. xD *sits next to Helgoland*

[Sheb]

*Sit next to Helgoland and Cheesecake.*

[mainiac]

All modern ground combat in three sentences.

I think you forgot one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q

[Strife26]

That's actually a modification of rule number two, which could actually be more accurate if I specified that it assumes that everything is killable once its position is fixed. This isn't actually true in some cases, but it's still good Gospel

[Tiruin]

*Sits next to Helgoland and Cheesecake and the other interested folks.*

Query! I recall reading about the shift between battling in formation and battling as individuals out of formation--what caused that shift other than the changing time periods?

[Jopax]

Tho this might be completely wrong since it's based on my understanding but I think fighting in formation fell out of style with the advent of heavy artillery which could easily obliterate a formation in a few shots. It also probably happened because the battlefields themselves changed, from open fields and fortifications to urban and rural population centers where you couldn't really keep a formation due to the terrain not allowing it.

Also PTW, this kind of thing interests me.

[scrdest]

It's been a bunch of things, gradually. The battlefields thing might have been a major factor, but also the fact that since rifles didn't take an eon to reload infantry could actually hit what they were aiming at with some reliability, whereas until the late XIXth century it was either use a rifle and take forever to reload, or do a group rendition of Spray and Pray with smoothbores.

And speaking of S&P, artillery's one thing, but WWI introduced machineguns, which placed 'tight formation' in the thesaurus under 'bloody massacre'.

[Cheesecake]

So why did people fight in big, open battlefields anyway? Why bother getting in formation and everything when you could simply ignore a big fight and send all your men to target farms, villages etc. to cut off their supplies?

[scrdest]

So why did people fight in big, open battlefields anyway? Why bother getting in formation and everything when you could simply ignore a big fight and send all your men to target farms, villages etc. to cut off their supplies?

They did. That is, for example, why fortified manors developed in France during the Hundred Years War, or 1600-1700ish Poland. But the enemy is also trying to do that any deny you the chance to do so, so you both construct defenses, then one side has to fight their way through them... boom, battle.

Other times, it was deliberately to crush the enemy's army as a whole, because random hostile armed men running around plundering villages without an actual army backing them is what is more formally known as banditry (and totally did happen, too, with defeated soldiers, BTW). And as any CK2 player knows, if you split your 10 000-man army into 1000-man units, you can get soundly beaten by a 5000-man army that stuck together. Cutting off supplies is nice and dandy, except you do that for a *reason*. Plus, you have to supply and coordinate those small units, which without modern communications and transport is not a ton of fun.