War

[Ironhold]

37 minutes ago, Traveler said:

During the 80’s I was working for the Defense Department.  The US was so far ahead in the cold war with superior equipment and training it was pitiful.  Something rather strange happened at our top naval aircraft training that surprised everybody.  The second world countries’ equipment was inferior and was well simulated in arial dog fights.  All of a sudden, the inferior planes were winning all the aerial combat training incursions.   What happened was that those simulating the inferior craft went to Radio Shack and purchased cheap fuzbuster and installing them in their cockpits.  All the multimillion-dollar advantage was outwitted by the cheap fuzbusters allowing the more nimble cheaper craft to set up traps and decimated their superior highly expensive counter parts. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_73_Easting

Back during Desert Storm, an American force was ordered to engage and obliterate all Iraqi forces in between their starting position and the line on the map known as 70 Easting. The commander didn't stop until they had arrived at 73 Easting, inflicting massively disproportionate casualties on the Iraqi forces. 

On the surface, it's easy to attribute the success to then-modern technologies like GPS, night vision, and so on, with the United States fielding top-of-the-line military hardware against Iraqi vehicles that were 20+ year old Soviet rust buckets.

In reality, there are two critical factors that people overlook: the outdated tactics the Iraqi forces were using, which dictated that it was impossible for a military force to attack from the angle the Americans attacked from, and the fact that American soldiers are given an appropriate degree of autonomy to act as they feel necessary while the Iraqi soldiers were paralyzed unless an officer told them to act. 

This battle is typical of how most engagements went during Desert Storm, with the outdated Iraqi tactics and lack of autonomy combining with the utterly worthless equipment they were giving their conscripts. 

[LDSGator]

3 hours ago, Traveler said:

submitted a very simple operation to the FBI that could be carried out by a handful of dedicated combatants that could result in up to 20 million lives lost.  If, without much effort, I can think of such actions – others much more motivated than myself could devise much more effective and devastating operations.  And with our open borders I am quite sure there are much more than a handful of dedicated combatants already placed.

the FBI can wage war against 20 million people? 

[Traveler]

15 hours ago, LDSGator said:

the FBI can wage war against 20 million people? 

Perhaps you have missed the point.  Very few individuals are needed to carry out a rather simple but very deadly operation that would be extremely difficult to defend, especially by organizations like the FBI.  In a free society there are vulnerabilities, especially when there are protected classes that are allowed to break laws and push envelopes with political implications without recourse.   

There is what I believe is another problem.  The more we shift responsibilities for liberty and freedom from individuals to institutions – especially government institutions – the more we are venerable to what governments are capable of organizing and doing with a top down approach.  Which in essence is what governments are most capable of – which is regulating (controlling) their own most cooperative citizens.  Even immunity against diseases is best protected by individual actions of an independent immune system that is not controlled by a hierarchy of centralization.

 

The Traveler