asymetric warfare

In article ,
says...

"Bernardz" wrote in message
news:MPG.1a53f4b4844803a89897d1@news...


This class of weapon system is quite easy to build. A decent machine
shop can build them. For example a V1 rocket in WW2 could be constructed
from very simple material, relatively unskilled labor and took about 500
man hours to complete.


The V-1 was a pulse jet not a rocket ,

You are right! It was a slip by me.

and was just about accurate to hit
a target as big as London from 150 miles away.

Yep.

As a military weapon
it was a failure except in so far as it tied down allied assets to
counter it.

Agreed. Although I would say psychologically it gave hope to the German
people that they were too were hitting the enemy back. Useless but a
doomed people will clutch at straws.



Keith




--
It is really stressful to play properly blackjack when you have 16 and
the dealer has 10.

22nd saying of Bernard

In article ,
says...
Bernardz wrote:

This class of weapon system is quite easy to build. A decent machine
shop can build them. For example a V1 rocket in WW2 could be constructed
from very simple material, relatively unskilled labor and took about 500
man hours to complete.

Well, not quite. It was *assembled* by relatively unskilled labor.
Many components (warhead, guidance) required skilled labor, and much
of the machining required fairly skilled labor, but connecting the
parts built by skilled labor could be done by relatively unskilled
labor.

I suppose it depends on your definition of skilled and fairly skilled.
Interesting much of the labor force was actually slave labor.

Sufficient to say that for the purpose of this discussion of asymmetric
warfare, a major power today should be able to gather and train a labor
forces to manufacture such a class of weapon which to combat these
weapons would require a much greater force by the US.


D.


--
It is really stressful to play properly blackjack when you have 16 and
the dealer has 10.

22nd saying of Bernard

From: Bernardz
Date: 12/25/2003 2:30 AM Central Standard Time
Message-id: MPG.1a554b3a5ecb7c2c9897dd@news

In article ,
says...

"Bernardz" wrote in message
news:MPG.1a53f4b4844803a89897d1@news...


This class of weapon system is quite easy to build. A decent machine
shop can build them. For example a V1 rocket in WW2 could be constructed
from very simple material, relatively unskilled labor and took about 500
man hours to complete.


The V-1 was a pulse jet not a rocket ,

You are right! It was a slip by me.

and was just about accurate to hit
a target as big as London from 150 miles away.

Yep.

As a military weapon
it was a failure except in so far as it tied down allied assets to
counter it.

Agreed. Although I would say psychologically it gave hope to the German
people that they were too were hitting the enemy back. Useless but a
doomed people will clutch at straws.



Keith


Not all that useless considering the U.S. made copies called the "Loon" and
intended to use them in the invasions of Japan. You can still see the remains
of the launchers on the beach of the Eglin AFB reservation. There are examples
of the Loons at Lackland AFB, Air Force Armament Museum and I am sure a few
other places.

Then again the U.S. also considered using cheimcal weapons in the invasions.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

In message , phil hunt
writes
On 23 Dec 2003 16:07:42 GMT, Alistair Gunn wrote:
Possibly. Another interpretation is that it's in continuation of
british policy of getting bad value for money in military equipment.
Another example of the same policy is the MRAV armoured vehicle:
Britain spent large amounts of money developing an 8x8 wheeled
vehicle (why? there are plenty of others on the market, and its a
mature technology so no big breakthroughs are possible),

See any hybrid diesel/electric 8x8s out there? Or any rapidly
reconfigurable vehicles available off-the-shelf?

MRAV had some goals, none of the off-the-shelf candidates met them,
turns out MRAV didn't either. But then MRAV wasn't too expensive.

The UK has very small armed forced considering the size of the
country's defence budget. Compare the UK (Population 59
million, spends 2.5% of GDP on arms) ordering 220 Typhoons whereas
Sweden (population 9 million, spends 2% of GDP on arms) can order
almost as many (204) Gripens. Even taking into account that Britain
spends a larger proportion of its defense budget on its navy, and
the Typhoon's unit cost is larger than the Gripen's, there's
something wrong here.

Not really, no. The UK buys the strategic lift and the support
infrastructure to be able to put troops, tanks, ships and aircraft far
overseas and fight: other countries concentrate on headline-grabbing
numbers of frontline assets but aren't able to send them anywhere (and
aren't tested in their ability to commit them to combat).


--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

Derek Lyons skrev i meddelelsen ...
"Carl Alex Friis Nielsen" wrote:

Derek Lyons skrev i meddelelsen ...

You and Phil, and to a lesser extent George, who should know better,
don't seem to realize that killing the enemy C&C is how the US fights
wars today.

The entire idea behind assymetric warfare is to refuse to play by the
enemy's rules - so if fighting the US use a doctrine not reqirering an C3I
infrastructure, which can be attacked - have lots of small dispersed units
capable of operating on their own initiative.

Which sounds pretty on paper, but the reality is that those units will
be picked off and killed individually, they emphatically won't win the
war for you. They won't stop your country from being occupied, they
won't accomplish much beyond dying gloriously. (And they won't exist
in the kind of country that's most likely to take on the US because of
internal politics.)

Ok, but remember while the Israelis have occupied land outside their
recognized borders for decades without the locals ever being able
to throw them out the price hasn´t really been low - or do you really
view Israel as a nice place to live. Is their military might really
effective at protecting them ?

If you can devise a doctrine without a conventional decision cycle noone
can get inside it.

OK, you first.
A "not so smart" bomb made out of an inflatable boat, 2 suicidal maniacs
and a lot of explosives almost taking out the Cole - thats assymetric
warfare.

ROTFLMAO. That's suicide. Or did you notice the attack didn't touch
the heart of the CVBG?

Almost eliminating a billion dollar warship and taking it out of action for
over a year plus killing 17 US sailors in the process is a laughing
matter to you ?

That sort of arrogance is probably the largest vulnerability of the US
- don't expect the rest of the world to be as defeatist as you wish them to
be.

People refusing to give in even in the face of impossible odds have been
known to end up winning in the end on several ocasions.

Forget about taking and holding terrain - just inflict casualties.

If you can't beat the enemy's physical strenght attack his will to fight.

It might work, but it probably won't.

It worked in Somalia, it worked in Vietnam, it worked in Iran, it worked in
Lebanon - why not toss the dice again ?

--------------------------------------
Carl Alex Friis Nielsen

Love Me - take me as I think I am

Steve Hix skrev i meddelelsen ...
In article ,
"Carl Alex Friis Nielsen" wrote:

The entire idea behind assymetric warfare is to refuse to play by the
enemy's rules - so if fighting the US use a doctrine not reqirering an
C3I
infrastructure, which can be attacked - have lots of small dispersed
units capable of
operating on their own initiative.

One problem here; totalitarian regimes tend not to tolerate lots of
initiative in their underlings, which makes preparing for this sort of
fighting somewhat harder.

Why do you assume the US will only fight totalitarian regimes ?

Or that totalitarian regimes can't exist with the suport of the population
- remember that only about 20 % of the worlds population share
our western values.

--------------------------------------
Carl Alex Friis Nielsen

Love Me - take me as I think I am

On Thu, 25 Dec 2003 19:11:37 +0000, Paul J. Adam wrote:
In message , phil hunt
writes
On 23 Dec 2003 16:07:42 GMT, Alistair Gunn wrote:
Possibly. Another interpretation is that it's in continuation of
british policy of getting bad value for money in military equipment.
Another example of the same policy is the MRAV armoured vehicle:
Britain spent large amounts of money developing an 8x8 wheeled
vehicle (why? there are plenty of others on the market, and its a
mature technology so no big breakthroughs are possible),

See any hybrid diesel/electric 8x8s out there?

Does it matter? There are plenty of vehicles. both military and non
military, that manage to work perfectly well without being
diesel/electric. One must consider how much extra it costs to
develop and produce a D/E vehicle, and whether the money might not
be better spent otherwise,

Or any rapidly
reconfigurable vehicles available off-the-shelf?

Again, is it really that big a deal? If it is a big deal (which I
doubt) a reconfigurable vehicle could be produced by starting with
an existing chassis (which would have had all the bugs ironed out
of it and therefore be reliable, cut off the rear half of the
superstructure, drill some holes for bolts, and

MRAV had some goals, none of the off-the-shelf candidates met them,
turns out MRAV didn't either. But then MRAV wasn't too expensive.

If you work out the ratio of what it cost divided by the amount of
military benefit Britian got from it, it was infinitely expensive.

MRAV cost (from memory, so probably wrong) Britain $200 million, for
which we could have bought about 400 vehicles such as the Patria AMV
or XA series. (Less if configured with fancier weapons, of course).

BTW, do you (or anyone else) have design specs for FRES? As in
weight, armament, armour, etc.

The UK has very small armed forced considering the size of the
country's defence budget. Compare the UK (Population 59
million, spends 2.5% of GDP on arms) ordering 220 Typhoons whereas
Sweden (population 9 million, spends 2% of GDP on arms) can order
almost as many (204) Gripens. Even taking into account that Britain
spends a larger proportion of its defense budget on its navy, and
the Typhoon's unit cost is larger than the Gripen's, there's
something wrong here.

Not really, no. The UK buys the strategic lift and the support
infrastructure to be able to put troops, tanks, ships and aircraft far
overseas and fight: other countries concentrate on headline-grabbing
numbers of frontline assets but aren't able to send them anywhere (and
aren't tested in their ability to commit them to combat).

There is a good transport infrastructure throughout Europe and in
any big war near this part of the world, I'm sure all European
countries would be able to cope, for example taking up civilian
assets such as aircraft. In other words, the transport etc assets
the UK is getting seem to be aimed at allowing it to fight
medium-sized wars with minimum (political and economic) disruption
to the rest of society.

It seems to me that there are 3 roles the UK armed forced can play:

1. small operations, typically peacekeeping or peacemaking,
involving a few infantry battalions, e.g. in ex-Yugosolavia or
Sierra Leone.

2. "poodling"; i.e. a force that gives a veneer of internationality
on an American invasion. This is a symbolic act (since the
USA's decision to go to war isn't affected by the size of the
poodle force) and can in principle be done with symbolic forces,
e.g. a brigade or so.

3. a big war in which vital national interests are at stake, and the
nation's entire military force is used in the struggle.

It seems to me that the UK is optimising its forces for type 2
conflicts at the expense of type 3 conflicts.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).

On 25 Dec 2003 06:26:52 GMT, Denyav wrote:

The term "Asymetric warfare" does not neccesarily indicate a low technology
approach aganist a mighty opponent,it might also contain the highest end
approach.
For example,Imperial Germanys decision to counter surface might of RN with
submarines is a classical example of "Asymetric warfare" even though submarines
were not the products of lower technology than surface ships.

Good example.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).

In article ,
"Carl Alex Friis Nielsen" wrote:

Ok, but remember while the Israelis have occupied land outside their
recognized borders for decades without the locals ever being able
to throw them out the price hasn´t really been low - or do you really
view Israel as a nice place to live. Is their military might really
effective at protecting them ?

Extremely so, when you consider the huge amount of money and time
invested in their destruction by pretty much every country that borders
them. They've got a higher standard of living than all of their
neighbors, they live longer, and have a moderate guarantee that they're
going to be in the same place for a while.

Overall, the Israeli military solution seems to be good enough so far.

ROTFLMAO. That's suicide. Or did you notice the attack didn't touch
the heart of the CVBG?

Almost eliminating a billion dollar warship and taking it out of action for
over a year plus killing 17 US sailors in the process is a laughing
matter to you ?

I can certainly see why someone might be upset that a one-shot,
not-to-be-repeated attack isn't as effective in the long run, and I can
certainly see why someone might think it's funny that other prople can
rely on it for their future military actions.

That sort of arrogance is probably the largest vulnerability of the
US - don't expect the rest of the world to be as defeatist as you
wish them to be.

Why not? It's worked pretty well so far.

"The US will get slaughtered in Afghanistan, like everyone else."
"The US will be in another Ivetnam when they invade Iraq."
"The Libyans caved in due to worldie pressure."

People refusing to give in even in the face of impossible odds have been
known to end up winning in the end on several ocasions.

....and have gotten beat into a pulp on many more. Not to mention that
most places don't have the "victory or death" mindset that the popular
literature hopes for. Especially when fighting against someone who's
really not that interested in invading those countries for direct
profit, like everyone else seems to do.

It worked in Somalia, it worked in Vietnam, it worked in Iran, it worked in
Lebanon - why not toss the dice again ?

Because it didn't work in Afghanistan and Iraq, in a very blatant and
obvious fashion. And without another opposing superpower to pay for it,
you won't get another Vietnam.

Many folks can't learn, but a lot of countries have gotten the message
that the US has figured out how to beat them at their own game.

The photos of Saddam put the final nail in that coffin.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

"Carl Alex Friis Nielsen" wrote:

Why do you assume the US will only fight totalitarian regimes ?

Name a non-totalitarian regime that has a good chance of going up
against the US militarily in the next 20 years.

Or that totalitarian regimes can't exist with the suport of the
population - remember that only about 20 % of the worlds population
share our western values.

Name a true regime of that sort with real popular support. Should be
simple, right?

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.