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[Giant ambush beetle]

That's pretty much what the UK and US had way back anyway. When I was in the Army in the early '80s, the standard weapons were the SLR (licence-made FAL), the Bren for squad-automatic roles and the GPMG (licence-made MAG) for more serious machine-gunning roles. Other duties were done by the Sterling SMG firing quite a hot version of the 9x19. It wasn't a bad weapons system, but it was generally considered that the lack of full-auto for every infantryman was a bad thing. Okay, I'm smaller than a typical infantryman, but firing an SLR on semi was bad enough.

The proposed combination of the .280 EM-2 and Taden is probably "the best infantry small-arms system that never was". It's ironic that the FAL took its place so successfully as that was also originally designed for the .280.

I got the chance to shoot my countries version of the FAL (STG 58) when I was drafted, along with the Steyr STG77. I loved the FAL, even though it fired the 7.62 it recoiled little more than the STG77 (Steyr AUG) due to its weight and the massive action sucking up some of the forces. Our version had the happy switch but sadly I was never allowed to use it, I was issued the STG77. But I'm sue it would have been very controllable. The again I'm 6'2 225.
The STG58 was a little heavier and larger but a much better weapon system.

And yes the 280 would have been a great round, even though I still prefer the 7.62. But there is one military cartridge I like even more, the 6.5x55 Swedish. If you could make it a little shorter which would not be a problem it would make the perfect all around cartridge. Light recoil (125 grains at 2700fps or 140 at 2500), excellent range, great punch, with half the recoil of the 7.62 and 2/3 of the cartridge weight. And since it has the bottom diameter of a 7.62 you can use 7.62 bolts.

[bEVEsthda]

The pace of technology during WW1 and WW2 has been touched previously in this thread. I suppose this is somewhat connected with that. However, I must say that the imaginary concept of "Luft46" was more of an inspiration.

So here's a quiz for you: While none of them participated in WW2, which, of the illustrated aircrafts below, are not american WW2 projects?

 

 

 

<hint:> It's a trick question.

 

No takers?

I said it was easy, and a trick question.

 

- They're all WW2 projects.

[bEVEsthda]

The "built with German Awesome!" thing is quite a difficult challenge to overcome. Especially in the UK, where understatement has subsequently been taken to mean that all our equipment was crap, so a lot of pretty good innovation is overlooked.

 

 

Well, many commonly encountered perceptions are utterly wrong. German equipment wasn't superior, in any general way. They were off the starting blocks earlier, which is why early in the WW2 they often seemed to have the edge.

 

But as fine as their engineers and scientists were, they lacked experience and valid thumb rules in aircraft design, and they sucked badly at conceptual design, so the reality is, that in matters of aircraft, they were pretty outclassed by the allies, particularly by US.

 

German aviation engineers should get credit for many things. They figured out how to cool jet engine turbine blades with bleed air. They discovered the advantages of a swept wing close to the speed of sound. And you can't fault their detail design. But these things never resulted in any advantages during the war. While some, both German and American aircraft were built with swept wings before, none was designed and built according to the German wind tunnel research from the end of the war. This was only a postwar development. And examples of German successes and progress is more than matched by corresponding allied.

 

When the Me 262 first flew, it had dramatically better performance than any Allied jet. But, up until that point, jet developments were pretty much entirely un-funded in US and Britain.

 

That didn't change the fact that Lockheed, already in 1939, had design concepts for a canard jet fighter with afterburning engines, more advanced than any German fantasy plane from 1945 pencil sketches.

 

The P-80 received funding from when the Me 262 became public in 1943. At the end of the war, it was emerging as a much better aircraft than the Me 262. Much more flyable, with a twice as powerful and much more flyable jet engine, and lower wing loading, and longer range. In 1946 the Lockheed P-80 set a new world speed record of 1004 km/h over a closed coarse (Me 262 max level speed = 850 km/h). More impressive yet, it flew an incredible distance of 3,954 km with an average speed of 940 km/h.

 

The P-84 (F-84 Thunderjet) and P-86 (F-86 Sabre) were ordered into development 1944. The B-47 Stratojet bomber was ordered into development in 1945, and first flew already in 1947. The Navy ordered their F1H Phantom, F2H Banshee and F9F Panther jetfighters into development during the war. And then there were a number of medium jet bombers and long range jet fighters.

As well as some magnificent piston engine aircraft. A number of +800 km/h air superiority fighters, which would be able to engage German jets even as these were at speed. Strategic aircraft with phenomenal altitude and cruise performance. Brutal King Kong, single engine, single seat, fighter bombers with huge weapon loads.

 

US started the war with extremely advanced civilian aircraft industry and very few military projects. Then the military started a steam roller that - as far as putting into mass production and fielding - stopped rather soon, already in 1944, with aircraft that went on and won the war. Stopped, because the enemy was already beaten, and because jets were more interesting for the future. If it had been necessary, there are a number of awesome warplanes US could have fielded during 1944 and 1945. As it is, even the latest German, sane developments from 1945 (essentially Ta 152) still aren't so hot, even compared to US '43 fighters.

 

The typical Luftwaffe'46 fanboy fantasy, that more Me 262, He-162, and Do 335, Ho 229, Ta 183, Me P1101 could have made an impact in 1946, 1947, had Germany only been given more time, is not only based upon an unrealistic assumption that these aircraft would be much better than they actually were or could have been, but also on the even more unrealistic assumption, that the opponent wouldn't respond in any way whatsoever. They're also guilty of not knowing or understanding what was done in US and Britain.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

I did. I did it incompetently and sloppily though. I did learn a ton of how to do that, but only as the image was mostly finished.

I know better how to, next time. The project was originally for a friend of mine, who is mostly clueless about military history, but was convinced Germany had a massive technological lead towards the end of WW2. And had a big row with me. He didn't really let me say anything at all, just shouted me down all the time.

 

Tip: Next time, do it with Microsoft PowerPoint. It will be much easier and classier.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

 

I don't remember this book being about warfare? Maybe hardly related how to endure in hardships and wartime. It's mostly about "pleasures are useless and pains are nothing" with stoic and platonic themes and wisdom here and there.

[Dermain]

 

No takers?

I said it was easy, and a trick question.

 

- They're all WW2 projects.

 

Well you did tell us twice that it was a trick question...

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

Alright to get back to serious discussions.

 

Sun Tzu's Art of War

and

Machiavelli's Prince

 

Are great to realize the big picture and have the best strategy and utilize most useful tactics.

[bEVEsthda]

Alright to get back to serious discussions.

 

Sun Tzu's Art of War

and

Machiavelli's Prince

 

Are great to realize the big picture and have the best strategy and utilize most useful tactics.

 

I have Machiavelli's The Prince. But to be honest I've never really read very far in it. But it seemed outdated. But maybe it isn't, if you're involved somewhere among the suits in a political party or a big corporation. I wouldn't know anything about that though. 

 

Art of War though, is brilliant. Not only Sun Tzu's original parts, but also all the commentaries added through time. I've had the dubious pleasure of being involved in playing EVE online, and it's amazing how Art of War nails it, even in relation to that. Unfortunately, I seemed to be the only one in my alliance who had read 'Art of War'. 

[Aimi]

whereas I personally think that Sunzi's Military Rules are kind of dumb and anachronistic, the kind of fortune-cookie garbage that doesn't do any good, vacillating between "blatantly obvious to the point of irrelevancy" and "completely wrong"

Vom Kriege was significantly better, but arguably incomplete and also not the easiest read

my own personal favorites are probably FM 100-5 (Operations) 1986 and Truppenführung but I'm a huge sucker for doctrine

[bEVEsthda]

whereas I personally think that Sunzi's Military Rules are kind of dumb and anachronistic, the kind of fortune-cookie garbage that doesn't do any good, vacillating between "blatantly obvious to the point of irrelevancy" and "completely wrong"

Vom Kriege was significantly better, but arguably incomplete and also not the easiest read

my own personal favorites are probably FM 100-5 (Operations) 1986 and Truppenführung but I'm a huge sucker for doctrine

 

Cool. That's interesting.

To get the discussion going, what in Art of War do you think are rules? Since you speak of "Sunzi's Military Rules"? Also, it might be interesting to get some exposure on what is completely wrong.

[Aimi]

Cool. That's interesting.
To get the discussion going, what in Art of War do you think are rules? Since you speak of "Sunzi's Military Rules"? Also, it might be interesting to get some exposure on what is completely wrong.

"Military Rules" is a more accurate translation of the word bingfa, which is the work's title in Mandarin. Rendering the title as "Art of War" was originally a way for early modern Europeans to compare the work to those of more well-known European authors (like Machiavelli, who wrote a dell'arte della guerra in the sixteenth century).

Much of what I don't like about the work is that it rarely offers specific, insightful comments. Yes, it's a good thing to accomplish one's aims without war, or without heavy fighting. Yes, it's a good thing if a commander knows what her enemy's plans are beforehand. Yes, it's nice if a commander has the ability to obtain major advantages prior to the start of combat, whatever those advantages might be - in terrain, troop training, equipment, whatever. But these are all things that should be relatively obvious ideals, and they are ideals that are also rarely practical or possible to implement. It does not help that the Rules are sometimes contradictory in inevitable ways; the author might say at one point, for example, to never deploy troops in certain kinds of difficult terrain, but at another point the author says to attack an enemy at unexpected points - and difficult terrain often makes for such an unexpected point. There are trade-offs and unknowables with each such choice, and the way in which they are addressed in the Rules is generally not helpful for the student.

Worse are the comments that are actively wrong or misleading. The author claims that a quick victory is the optimal solution (true) but that drawing out hostilities is never worthwhile (horribly, horribly false). (To return to the contradictory thing, the author also suggests wearing down one's opponent by prolonged campaigning prior to engaging an enemy army in a set-piece engagement. Yeahhh.) Another quotation claims that the victorious army only joins battle when victory is certain, which is not true in multiple ways: almost no army in history has ever been certain of victory beforehand, and many that prepared well through good strategy saw their strategy unhinged by poor tactics or bad luck during the battle itself. The author never addresses the strategy-tactics divide (or synergy, or whatever you want to call it) specifically, because those terms would have been anachronistic to him, but his comment has been fodder for successive generations of vapid idiots claiming that the physical act of fighting does not matter compared to the planning and preparation beforehand.

The work is also, inescapably, a product of its times and of its author. Several passages in the Rules are written in a way that suggests the author had trouble at court or with his superiors and was preoccupied with a general's fate at the whim of a king; others rely on the sort of classical Chinese geometric geography that has no relevance to the modern reader. Others appear in the segments on period-specific technology (incendiary attacks, walled cities, chariots, the method and cost of armaments, etc.); attempting to expand the meaning of those comments to encompass modern technology by analogy is tendentious nonsense. One would be better served by reading modern soldiers' or scholars' takes on those modern concepts.

The Military Rules, along with the other six classics, are a fine primary source for studying ancient Chinese warfare; due to the fetishization that the work has been subjected to over the last century and a half around the world, a basic understanding of the Rules is probably necessary for contextualizing the actions of many military figures of recent history. But, in my opinion, they are not timeless works of genius that illuminate the core of what warfare truly is.

Vom Kriege, while also something of an anachronism in many ways for modern warfare, at least contains useful concepts that are not immediately apparent to many readers. Clausewitz's concept of friction is arguably the most important contribution anybody has ever made to the understanding of warfare, and his attempt to characterize the essence of morale does a much better job than most authors'. Most criticisms of Vom Kriege, including the incessant bleating about the "trinity", claims of inherent aggression and all sorts of similar junk, are misdirected and founded on a poor reading of the source material; a more fair criticism is that many of the things Clausewitz discusses were made irrelevant by the firepower revolution in military affairs and by the subsequent RMA in the late twentieth century, that his work completely fails to address the economic aspect of warfare in a fairly egregious way, and that Vom Kriege simply isn't a very fun read, even for those fluent in German.

Fundamentally, though, older works on warfare aren't that useful for understanding warfare in the same way that older works on philosophy aren't that useful for understanding philosophy. A student who read nothing but Platon and Aristoteles would not have much of an understanding of philosophy at all, yet many people believe that reading old military classics will give a proper understanding of the art of warfare. And warfare has fundamentally and objectively changed in important ways over the last few millennia. The revolutions in military affairs that I mentioned before, for example. Warfare has evolved, and so has the way people think about it; denying that truth, and failing to acknowledge it, is obscurantism of a type that I think is annoying at best.

[bEVEsthda]

"Military Rules" is a more accurate translation of the word bingfa, which is the work's title in Mandarin. ...  Snip.

 

Thank you.

 

I had hoped for more concrete examples from the perspective of modern military thinking.

But I see your points.

 

But it should be obvious that you can't ignore the impact of, for example, air power. And that points about time specific technology are irrelevant.

The contradictory nature, that you discuss, is precisely why I have never perceived 'Art of War' as rules. More things that should be considered.

Certainly, if one takes 'Art of War' as some ready made recipe, follow steps for how to win wars, there is a basis for criticism. Still, written Chinese don't work quite as phonetic languages, and it's maybe easy to read a lot into a translation, which was never there.

 

There is still a very good use for 'Art of War' though.

People are very prone to group thinking, and quoting Sun Tzu - while, for example, playing EVE online - remains a good method to get people to clear their mind, and get behind an effort to have their act together.

[Cknarf]

Ugh. too much reading. Need more planes.

 

 

YIPPEEEEEEEEE!

[bEVEsthda]

The above aircraft is Cinnabar red, all over. It was a special aircraft used by Lockheed to demonstrate how the P-38 could and should be flown. It was also the 5000'th P-38 built. Unfortunately it did not incorporate the anti-compressibility flaps, which Lockheed maybe should have focused on, at this time, instead of trying to convince pilots that there was nothing wrong with the plane.

 

 

 

This is something - slightly - different. One of the piston engine super-fighters developed by US during WW2, but never put into use (because they were winning anyway).

It's a 3000 hp, 700 km/h, ultra-endurance, ultra-range, heavy fighter, with flight performance equaling the P-51 Mustang. But it could also take on 3 tonnes of bombs and rockets (roughly the same as a B-17 Flying Fortress), and it could fly around on it's normal cruising speed for 15 hours.

...Oh yeah, and it could also take off and land on aircraft carriers.

 

 

The Boeing F8B.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

It doesn't need a genius to understand that some or most of lessons in Art of War are outdated because of Machine Guns, Tanks, Aircraft and Nukes. Still it enhances mind... it's like reading Aristotle's logic as your first philosophical book. Simple but mind provoking... useful at the end.

[bEVEsthda]

You know all them "pft-pft-pft" SF-movie-guns that spit wimpy glowing peas at low speed?

Never understood that. Why would advanced SF-technology societies rely on such failures?

 

Now this - Is a space-gun!!

 

[Jstatham1227]

 

 

I'll get one of these eventually. 

[Fidite Nemini]

You know all them "pft-pft-pft" SF-movie-guns that spit wimpy glowing peas at low speed?

Never understood that. Why would advanced SF-technology societies rely on such failures?

 

Now this - Is a space-gun!!

 

 

Calico M950 ...

[Colaman172]

I'm not sure if posted yet, but here are some personal favorites.

Spoiler

 

Colt Model 1911

Browning Automatic Rifle (or BAR) 

Suomi M31 (later copied by the Soviet Union to make the more famous PPSH-41) 

Mosin Nagant Model 1891 (Only firearm I have ever used. It hurts the shoulder like hell without a rubber buttpad)

[bEVEsthda]

This is something I've been in mind to post here for awhile. ...But time flies.

 

 

 

 

So what is it? Well, from left to right. the top: TNP and HMX.

Bottom: TNT, RDX and PETN.

 

And these happen to be the major main ingredients in most of the "modern military explosives", which have made the world a worse place since WW1.

 

TNP (TriNitroPhenol) was first out, and was the major ingredient in Lyddite and Shellite, two British WW1 explosives. Lyddite was TNP melted together with petroleum jelly and was cast into artillery shells. Because the Lyddite shells were insensitive enough to be fired from guns, but tended to explode on hard impact, regardless of the fuse, the Navy needed something even more insensitive for their armor piercing shells. That was Shellite, which added some DiNitroPhenol, TriNitroBenzene alternatively Hexanitrodiphenylamine to the TNP mix. TNP went out of use because of it's precarious shelf life. It's an acid which slowly attacks the metals in the shell. 

 

TNT (TriNitroToulene) was started to be used by the Germans, also during WW1. TNT has many extremely good properties. It's very insensitive. What's more, it transfers that insensitivity to most mixes with other ingredients. It also transfers a low critical diameter. So despite not being a strong explosive in itself, it has been very popular as ingredient in many explosives. In its almost pure forms (though it typically also contains DNT) it's known as Trotyl or Tritol.

Explosives containing some TNT, as an ingredient, is almost the entire list of explosives used during WW2 and after, through Vietnam war: Amatol, Ammonal, Tritonal, Torpex, Cyclotol, Hexotol, 'B' (i.e. B2, B3 etc), Octol, H6, Hexolite, DBX, HBX, Baratol, Pentolite.

In more recent years, use of TNT has been in sharp decline with US & Britain.

 

RDX is the main player today. It's also an ingredient in many of the WW2 explosives above. But of more modern interest is to use it without mixing it with TNT. The reasons are both environmental and the fact that a TNT+RDX mix doesn't sit well in a fire. So in order to make RDX insensitive enough, a number of other tricks have come into use instead. Combining it with waxes, oils and polymers.

A famous plastic explosive, using RDX as the main ingredient, is 'C', like C4, the latest version. Most PBX explosives (polymer bonded) are also based on RDX. 'A', like A5, as used in landmines and rockets, is also an RDX explosive. ("A" is a standardized pellet explosive intended for press-filling charges. "B" is a standardized explosive for melt-casting into shells. "C" is a standardized, putty like plastic explosive.)

 

HMX is a very powerful explosive substance. It's also more expensive and more difficult to combine to successful mixes. The most wellknown HMX-explosive is probably Octol, where it's mixed with TNT. A few PBX-explosives are also HMX based.

 

PETN is used in many parts of the world as an alternative to RDX. They have similar properties. The funny thing about PETN is that in pure form, it's very sensitive, ready to explode anytime. So in the last manufacturing step, the crystals are treated with a type of wax. This wax treated PETN is then almost as insensitive as TNT. An infamous plastic explosive using PETN as the main ingredient, is the Czech plastic explosive called Semtex. PETN and TNT mix is called Pentolite. PETN also have some civilian use as in products like Detasheet and Detacord.

 

 

Otherwise, civilian explosives have to be much cheaper, less toxic, more environmental friendly, but don't need as long shelf life or to be as extremely insensitive. So Dynamites, ANFOs and GSXes are based on other ingredients, AN (Ammonium Nitrate), Methylammonium Nitrate, Nitroglycerin, Nitroglycol, Nitrocellulose, DNT, Sodium Nitrate.

[The Invader]

The Israeli Merkava Mk 5 main battle tank. It's probably one of the most heavily armored tanks around.

[The Invader]

And Moab, it certainly qualifies as hot.

[Inquisitor Recon]

To continue with the "started in WWII" trend. The B-36.

Nice size comparison with some of its predecessors there.