Re: What is the army unit that soldiers are most willing to die for?

On Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:30:19 +1000, James A. Donald wrote:

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:27:31 -0600, Ric Locke
<warrick.locke@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]

Thus the atomization of the Army -- something you want to depict; it's
just that it's already happening. Platoons (see my other screed) are
being broken into "sections" or "fire teams", with weapons at their
disposal that are incredibly lethal by former standards. Thus rank
inflation -- we have fewer and fewer Privates, because the three- or
four-man fire team needs a Corporal or Private First Class to lead it,
rather than the one per squad from before. Thus the incredible increase
in training; an American Corporal leading a fire team gets an education
in tactics and strategy that few Generals of a century ago had. Thus the
modern emphasis on "special forces", teams of a half-dozen or a dozen
soldiers operating completely independently of what our ancestors (or
even our predecssors as recently as Viet Nam) would have considered the
normal line of command.

This is a return to medieval forms of organization and loyalty,

No.

The driver -- the basic fact around which all methods and procedures are
constructed -- for warfare is the amount of power available (as it is
for most everything). An individual human being produces about 200 watts
sustained, 300 or so for peaks lasting a minute or less; very strong or
fit individuals may add as much as 25% to that. If you want more power,
and don't have portable machinery, you must collect a lot of people and
get them to work together. Tools concentrate that power and direct it at
the specific point of application, but don't increase the amount of
power available. A man swinging a sword is applying about fifty to
seventy-five watts to it. The weight of the sword converts that power to
kinetic energy, the edge of the sword applies that kinetic energy to a
very small portion of the target, and the sword does more damage than a
single hand-blow with the same power behind it.

Early, medieval, and early-modern warfare was based around the army, a
collection of people working together to apply sufficient power to the
enemy. Don't be fooled by the fact that early armies tended to be about
company-sized by modern standards. They were engaging enemies about the
same size; the principle of collecting a big bunch of people together is
the important one. Thus the phalanx; thus the Roman army, which is the
prototype for all Western armies since. Thus uniforms and binding
rituals designed to get all the people in the army applying the force
available to them to the designated target.

To the extent (which is not large) that modern military theory resembles
ancient practice, it is to Viking raids and pirate attacks. A raiding
party has sufficient power as a group to utterly overwhelm unarmed or
lightly-armed and ill- or un-trained villagers. Modern military practice
puts overwhelming force in the hands of individuals, and deploys them in
small groups across the battlespace. Our fairly-recent ancestors studied
Indian raids with a view to countering them. Current military theorists
study Indian raids to see how the methods and tactics apply to modern
warfare, and they do.

"Battlefield" is an archaic concept. One of the most fearsome weapons a
modern soldier, especially an American, can carry is what amounts to an
oversized laser pointer. Loitering overhead is an airplane carrying
"smart" bombs. Put the red dot on what you wish to obliterate, and push
the button that tells the pilot (or, rather, the computer systems in the
aircraft, which may not even have a human being in it) what specific
weapon may be desired. A short time later, BOOM! The aircraft and the
airfield it was launched from are part of the "battlespace".

which should lead to a return to rattling good yarns

One can hope :-)

- though being
insufficiently familiar with real life modern warfare, I could not
write such story. Easier to write with an invented, or heavily
modified, environment to rationalize away any discrepancies.

Study the American Indians, the Vikings, and others whose practice was
small-unit raids against essentially unarmed enemies. You'll get closer
than anything the Battle of the Bulge can teach you.

However, I notice that much SF military fiction has distinctly World
War I/ World War II flavor - thus, for example, John Ringo's company
fights as a company, with a couple of hundred armored battle suits all
dug in and firing in approximately the same direction at approximately
the same enemy.

Yup. But notice that the enemy in those books is also using large-unit
procedures and tactics (actually a mixture of those and "raid" tactics),
after the initial raids. Ringo knows what he's doing, though. For
something more modern, look into what he calls the "wanker series",
_Ghost_ and its sequels.

Regards,
Ric
.

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