• 8: Do pilots who fly bombers have to learn any sophisticated techniques and maneuvers, or is it as simple as it looks?, submitted on 2021-12-27 03:23:04+08:00.
• 9: Can someone explain the Iraq war WMD intelligence failure?, submitted on 2021-12-27 07:21:20+08:00.
• 10: How accurate is this comment? (Its about China vs U.S), submitted on 2021-12-28 02:26:50+08:00.
• 11: What drives people to join ISIS?, submitted on 2021-12-28 10:37:25+08:00.
• 12: What is Iran’s Military Doctrine and how does it differ between their own forces and that of their proxies?, submitted on 2021-12-30 09:49:23+08:00.
• 13: What use does a modern flamethrower have on a modern battlefield?, submitted on 2021-12-30 19:00:58+08:00.
• 14: What kind of war was the Polish military preparing for in 1930s, submitted on 2021-12-30 19:15:37+08:00.
• 15: Is defending Taiwan the best option for the USA?, submitted on 2022-01-02 08:28:10+08:00.

8: Do pilots who fly bombers have to learn any sophisticated techniques and maneuvers, or is it as simple as it looks?, submitted on 2021-12-27 03:23:04+08:00.

—– 8.1 —–2021-12-28 01:56:47+08:00:

B-1 is capable of bomb toss too which is a very acrobatic maneuver.

9: Can someone explain the Iraq war WMD intelligence failure?, submitted on 2021-12-27 07:21:20+08:00.

—– 9.1 —–2021-12-27 14:14:36+08:00:

Iran, who unsurprisingly bankrolled the aforementioned conspiracy by Iraqi sources to deceive the United States. Ahmed Chalabi, arguably the leading source claiming that WMD existed in the leadup to the 2003 war, was later discovered to be an asset of Iranian intelligence.

10: How accurate is this comment? (Its about China vs U.S), submitted on 2021-12-28 02:26:50+08:00.

—– 10.1 —–2021-12-28 06:59:30+08:00:

The opposite is true. The PLA has struggled for decades with what it calls the “one man show” - the tendency of all command officers to ignore both their staff and their superiors. The force is a case study on the limits of the cult of decentralized command and its lack of applicability in a modern combined arms setting.

The cultural insubordination of the PLA comes from two sources. First, the last consequential military advisory mission to China was the German advisory mission in the 1920s and 30s. Prior to that, all consequential army advisors to China were also German, or Japanese (who took German doctrine to an extreme level). The “raw material” the PLA inherited when they absorbed warlord troops already subscribed to a crude, exaggerated simplification of German doctrine, and this is evident in any account of the warlord era and KMT-Japan conflict.

Prior to that, Chinese armies had always subscribed to a decentralized command model. This went well beyond German “mission command” - the kind of decentralization advocated in the Seven Military Classics and most forcefully in the Art of War involved both decentralization of approach and mission. To this day Chinese have a “pre-modern” conception of command, where commanders are in effect “military contractors” of the state, elevated, demoted, and given resources based on their results, with total freedom to decide how their unit is trained, fed, and moved. While the modern PLA uses Commissars to enforce standardized SOP, this mindset is still evident in PLA instructional books like Outstanding Company Commander.

Second, the PLA is the only major power army that started as guerrillas. It waged guerrilla warfare across China with no way for commanders to communicate with each other. Base areas functioned independently from one another, and forward columns independently from base areas. After the Korean War, Peng Dehuai, noticing the obsolescence of decentralization, attempted to restructure command on Soviet lines. But, he was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution which led to his fall from power and replacement by the “purist” Lin Biao, who reverted the PLA back to its roots. Until Xi, there was never again a serious attempt to centralize PLA command as the decade after Lin’s fall saw the elimination of both China’s major security threats through Sino-American detente and Soviet decline.

In the modern PLA command officers have near total freedom to decide upon courses of action, independent of senior ranks. I say near total freedom because they are constrained by “dual command” with Commissars. Contra popular belief, however, the PLA commissar is not a Soviet-style political officer with equal status to the command officer, nor is his main job to “enforce loyalty to the party”. Rather, the commissar (literally “instructor” in Chinese) is the voice of doctrinal orthodoxy. His main role is to ensure whatever approach the commander takes aligns with the doctrine handed down from the CMC and the mission given by his superiors. This is serious business because the CMC is constantly releasing new regulations and promoting initiatives to correct inabilities. In effect the party has accepted that its commanders will always function in an independent manner and is only trying to get them to subscribe to certain principles.

For cultural reasons (here I’m talking not just about the PLA but China as a whole) the Commissar usually does a poor job of doing even this. The PLA has put out the same reform initiatives for decades (“two inabilities”, supposedly addressed in the 1980s was pulled out of the grave last decade) and enforcement is irregular. The three problems facing commissars are a cultural preference for harmony, “chabuduo” and incentives. The kind of insubordination you’ll see in the PLA is not a company and battalion commanders yelling at each other, but plotting against each other. The company commander will come up with ways, whether that’s shamming, inventing facts, or misrepresenting conditions to claim he is complying with the battalion commander even if he is doing something very different. Similarly, commissars are almost never going to have a completely hostile relationship with their command officers but will rather try to persuade the unit to follow the CMC’s edicts and slip in changes here and there. The word “chabuduo”, which translates to something like good enough, is basically the spirit of modern China. Well near everything is shammed in China, and in the army it’s no different. No one likes to think about risks until they happen, and when they do the preference is to fix the problem with duct tape and worry about it if it flares up again. A “compliance officer” (basically what the commissar is) is never popular, unless he does his job poorly. Finally, there are strong incentives for the commissar to do his job badly. Official and unofficial spiffs and bonuses (but far more of the first and far less of the second than most imagine) are a critical part of the officer corps’ income, and are tied to performance. No one wants to report dysfunction as a result.

This preference to solve problems at the ground level and not “bother” superiors (who really do not like to be bothered in the PLA) extends all the way up the chain of command. Problems are a sign of poor performance, including for one’s superiors, and those superiors want independent, troubleshooting officers who sham their way through mishaps and make no noise while they do it. This is reflected in the PLA’s leadership guidelines to its officers, which as far as I can tell still have not been changed despite the centralizing direction of reform. According to them the ideal officer should display:

1. Cunning (meaning the ability to improvise)

2. Initiative (which is understood to mean relentless tactical and organizational opportunism)

3. Aggressiveness

4. Bold leadership

5. No hesitation

6. Closely held plans (maintain OpSec)

7. Fast and bold decision making

Decentralization on this level is not a good thing and one of the main trajectories of PLA reform has been ending “one man show” culture. A force that fights this way cannot perform effective combined arms, can never have an accurate picture of what is going on, can never efficiently manage logistics, and can never control its rate of losses. While China was still a poor country aiming to fight Russia and America asymmetrically, it could get by using a “neo-guerrilla” force. The PLA of the 2000s and before never expected much air support or fire support anyway, and its logistical requirements were minimal. The PLA today, in contrast, expects to have air superiority in any land war it fights and artillery superiority against any enemy except Russia. Consequently, the main trajectory of reform since at least 1997 has been improving coordination and restraining initiative.

—– 10.2 —–2021-12-28 07:41:24+08:00:

Shamming in a military context just means improvising to pass inspection. I made no comment on the quality of Chinese rockets.

—– 10.3 —–2021-12-28 09:34:41+08:00:

There is no way to tell without a war

—– 10.4 —–2021-12-28 09:36:12+08:00:

The CAB is a clone of the Russian Motor Rifle Brigade, which is the most heavily armed brigade in the world. Critically it has the most self propelled fire support of any brigade configuration.

It absolutely aligns. Fighting in CAB format requires deep integration with fire support which in turn requires a more centralized and less disjointed command philosophy.

—– 10.5 —–2021-12-28 09:40:29+08:00:

Unfortunately the only good English language sources are M Taylor Fravel, Harold Tanner and Xiaobing Li. I’m in the process of translating some official publications and NDU workbooks which I’ll drop on Amazon soon as ebooks, but this probably isn’t the place to advertise them.

—– 10.6 —–2021-12-28 09:49:38+08:00:

Completely bollocks. The PLA was very ill suited to protest suppression, having been indoctrinated to think they were the “shields of the people” and performed it very incompetently. The tank man video is just one example of how unready they were to kill Chinese civilians. In the aftermath of Tiananmen the party spawned numerous alternative security apparatuses, the largest being the People’s Armed Police to make up the deficit.

The Chinese army is absolutely not comparable to the Soviet army. What little Soviet influence existed was purged twice - first in the Zunyi Conference and second in the purge that replaced Peng with Lin Biao. Even prior to the Zunyi Conference their “Soviet advisor” was a German Communist civilian. This stereotyping of the PLA as the same as the Soviet army is the main barrier for foreigners to understand the force and is demonstrably untrue. The aggressive tactics in Korea were a result of the aggressive, guerrilla spirit of the PVA, not detailed operational plans gone bad - no such detailed plans ever existed as tactical approaches were decided “on the spot”.

The PLA does have internal military courts. To disabuse yourself of the idea that freedom of speech in the PLA is worse than in democratic armies, just google “Dai Xu” or “Zhang Zhaozong”. They are two among dozens of PLA officers who published highly inflammatory books and articles (many of which contradict the status quo and party priorities) while serving as active duty officers.

—– 10.7 —–2021-12-28 09:54:58+08:00:

Definitely - since the US and other Western armies did a lot of work figuring out Soviet/Russian SOP and comparatively little work on the Chinese, there’s this hand waving mentality that the two must be the same because they’re both authoritarian Communist states. Im seeing in more recent US stuff (like the newest OpFor doctrine overview) a more accurate understanding of Chinese doctrine. You can tell from the manual that the circulation of the “systems warfare” concept fascinated them for a bit and inspired them to dig deeper.

—– 10.8 —–2021-12-28 10:02:36+08:00:

Cutting corners in inspection and pragmatically not complying with regulations is a vital way to get things done quickly in any field. I’d argue chabuduo was key to China’s success in recent years but that’s outside the scope of the sub.

—– 10.9 —–2021-12-28 10:23:40+08:00:

There is no reliable death count at Tiananmen. The death count could be as high as 2,700 or as low as a few hundred. That’s largely superfluous though because the idea that soldiers eventually followed orders to kill people should be a given. If they didn’t, then we would think something was wrong.

The German military - widely held to be the most flexible and decentralized in Europe - always fought under authoritarian regimes.

Your comments about Lin Biao are totally wrong. He was the one who reinstituted people’s war and re-abolished ranks. Peng was not purged for professionalizing but for being Mao’s enemy and aligned with Liu Shaoqi, the main target of the cultural Revolution. As should be obvious, since Mao clearly took no objection to professionalization in 1950-64.

Commissars in China don’t give orders except in extreme circumstances and there are no “gulags” for PLA officers.

—– 10.10 —–2021-12-28 10:26:04+08:00:

I don’t know unfortunately.

—– 10.11 —–2021-12-28 10:41:18+08:00:

Not well. If you can point to one point that still stands after my last reply I can address it.

—– 10.12 —–2021-12-28 10:42:19+08:00:

All well built modern brigades are built for individual operations. The basic self sustaining unit has shifted from the division to the brigade - this has been done in the US, Russia and China. China is just cloning the Russian brigade with the CAB idea and it has nothing to do with command philosophy.

—– 10.13 —–2021-12-28 10:57:08+08:00:

On the first one, as I said the aggressive tactics had to do with the spirit of the PVA and not some detailed tactical plan. No such plan existed and no one has uncovered it. Peng’s staff only decided the trajectory of the attack and there was great variance in PVA tactics on the ground level because individual officers had freedom to decide.

The second point I thought was too silly to reply to. There’s obviously no evidence these guys are allowed to speak because they’re stupid, and it in fact speaks volumes about the PLA’s free speech that active duty senior officers are allowed to keep publishing and speaking even after saying such stupid things. In most armies they’d be shut up. Are they allowed to speak because they’re not a threat? No PLA officer is a threat right now because the CCP is nowhere near unpopular enough for a coup to be successful.

—– 10.14 —–2021-12-28 13:09:53+08:00:

The motivation - in all armies - for the transition from the division to the brigade as the main fighting unit has to do mainly with economics and firepower. Today, armies are smaller than during the Cold War, their missions are often more low intensity, and a single brigade can hold a far greater amount of front than half a century ago due to advances in fire support technology.

Brigade commanders in the PLA were always capable of acting independently (whether their division commanders liked it or not).

—– 10.15 —–2021-12-28 21:26:11+08:00:

He was only there for a very short amount of time before being kicked out by Chiang’s anti-communist purge. He, and most other Soviet advisors, ironically had a far greater impact on the Kuomintang than on the CCP, so much so that Chiang Ching-Kuo after the fall of the mainland would introduce political commissars in Taiwan and restructure the military on Soviet lines. The ROC retains the Commissar system to this day.

Soviet influence was mainly disseminated through their instructors at Whampoa, who formed the majority of the foreign faculty in the early years. The only prominent CCP commander their teachings reached, however, was Lin Biao. Though much has been made of Lin’s Soviet influence, he clearly rejected Soviet military thought and was for his entire career the strongest advocate for “people’s war” and abolition of rank in China, even more strongly than Mao. A little known fact is that Mao’s little red book was compiled by Lin.

11: What drives people to join ISIS?, submitted on 2021-12-28 10:37:25+08:00.

—– 11.1 —–2021-12-28 14:41:21+08:00:

The fact that their ideology - the embodiment of evil and chaos to most of the world - was actually quite normal and acceptable for the Sunnis of Iraq and Syria. This is the bitter pill we have to swallow if we really want to understand this phenomenon. ISIL was not some gang of crazy foreign fighters who tyrannized the locals: the overwhelming majority of their supporters and fighters were Iraqi and Syrian. Nor was it cynically accepted by the locals as a way of advancing Sunni Arab interests - as you mentioned, its followers proved themselves to be “true believers”.

ISIL’s ideology was the culmination of the modern Islamist movement, which sought to remedy the perceived humiliation and catastrophe that had beset the Arab world in the 19th and 20th centuries through mobilizing a special, spiritual strength that could be found in the Islamic faith. Most Muslims in the Middle East would reject the sanitizing soundbyte that Islam is a “religion of peace”, and instead would proudly boast that Islam is the most warlike, most manly religion. Today there seems to be this “enlightened” idea that Islam makes historical mention of war similar to the Old Testament, but at its core is an ethical code comparable to the New Testament. People who have not read the Koran are totally unaware of just how “on the nose” it is when it comes to its advocacy of holy war, and how instructive it is. Some passages below:

‘So let those who sell the life of this world for the Next World fight in the Way of Allah. If someone fights in the Way of Allah, whether he is killed or is victorious, We will pay him an immense reward’ (4:74).

‘Fight in the Way of Allah against those who fight you’ (2:190);

‘Kill them wherever you come across them’ (II, 191);

‘Do not become faint-hearted and call for peace’ (47:35);

‘The life of this world is merely a game and a diversion’ (47:36);

‘But whoever is tight-fisted is only tight-fisted to himself’ (47:38).

‘Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it’,

‘You who have iman [faith]! What is the matter with you that when you are told, “Go out and fight in the way of Allah”, you sink down heavily to the earth? Are you happier with this world than the Next World?” (9:38);

“Say [to the Companions]: “What do you await for us except for one of the two best things [martyrdom or victory]?” (9:52).

‘Fighting is prescribed for you even if it is hateful to you. It may be that you hate something when it is good for you and it may be that you love something when it is bad for you. Allah knows and you do not know’ (2:216)

These barely scratch the surface. As you can see, unlike the other Abrahamic texts, the Koran is not just telling men to fight but is offering them advice on how to be brave in battle and make peace with death. It is passages like these which are the reason Arabs have turned to Islam for salvation in their time of national peril. It is a very common and not entirely unsubstantiated belief in the Middle East that Islam “gives you courage”. The repeated military failures of Arab governments and their spinelessness in the face of Western domination has led the people of the region to claw for any solution to their national peril. The most familiar, most well known solution is the idea that a “legion of martyrs” will, through using fanaticism as a force multiplier and a way to inspire the masses, overthrow the dictators, unify the region, and defeat Israel, America, and Iran.

Vitally, the argument extremists make is not just that “Allah will favor us if we are more faithful”. It is that an Islamic society is inherently good at war - its men are not afraid to die and its people are totally committed to the mission, with no distractions. If there is one belief that is well near universal in the divided Arab world, it’s that the Arabs need to get better at war, thus the appeal of extremism.

As for why ISIL’s followers were willing to commit terrible atrocities, the worldview of Islamic fundamentalism is extremely ascetic - in other words, it hates this dunya (material world and all the chaos that comes with it) and eagerly awaits the afterlife. The ideal Muslim finds a way to be content in spite of the fact that he rejects all worldly pleasures like drink and gambling. He endures his existence on this dunya simply because he needs to serve Allah, and lives for that duty “no matter what that may be” (but 99% of the time this means fighting). For people with this worldview, someone’s worldly suffering is an extremely trivial thing. People who are visibly suffering and having a hard time parting with this dunya - like ISIL’s victims - are to be mocked, not pitied.

ISIL’s vision of a society was essentially a place where everyone found no pleasure with the world, but lived for the fulfillment provided by camaraderie and their mission to Allah. To most people this sounds terrible, but it’s critical to note that a society like this already exists in every country: that country’s army. All military organizations display an ascetic mindset, the only difference with ISIL was their desire to impose this ascetic mindset on civilians as well. And, while that seems extreme to us, virtually every society that has been through a total war for its survival - be that Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or Imperial Japan - also “universalized” asceticism and turned itself into one big army camp. ISIL’s extremism is much easier to understand when you realize the ~10 million people living under ISIL’s rule were involved in a total war against more than a dozen countries.

So in summary, ISIL’s appeal and its extremism stemmed from 3 things:

1. Iraq, Syria, and the Arab world in general faced division and foreign domination owing to a lack of unity and military strength.
2. Islam seemed to offer a solution because there is a not entirely mystical argument that it is a force multiplier.
3. The draconian policies imposed by ISIL mirrored the behavior of other states fighting a total war for their survival. They are only unique because they are the first to be cloaked in religions terms.

—– 11.2 —–2021-12-28 21:21:33+08:00:

Yes that’s spot on - destruction of idols has been a central part of the “proper” practice of Islam since antiquity. The best way to conceive of Islam’s worldview is to understand that the pre-Islamic Arabs largely conceived of themselves as Christians. Muhammad was trying to address the problem of the chronic failure of Christian churches to actually practice Christianity. He concluded that what was lacking was an army of faith to enforce consistency and root out hypocrisy. Idols were just one example of the hypocrisy of Christian churches - the Bible explicitly forbids them, but they kept the masses coming and paying donations. More offensively, Mecca, despite being majority Abrahamic by Muhammad’s time, was still holding pagan idols in the Kaaba.

—– 11.3 —–2021-12-29 00:59:40+08:00:

It’s a complex point and I didn’t quite know how to put it. ISIL’s draconianism was definitely out of religious conviction, and exceeded by an order of magnitude the policies of most wartime governments. The point I was trying to communicate was simply that their harshness was at least in part motivated by the fact that their state’s entire existence from conception to demise was during a time of “revolutionary war”.

12: What is Iran’s Military Doctrine and how does it differ between their own forces and that of their proxies?, submitted on 2021-12-30 09:49:23+08:00.

—– 12.1 —–2021-12-31 10:51:24+08:00:

Iran describes its own military doctrine as “revolutionary:” in nature. In 2014 Hamed Hamdani, while explaining the philosophy of the Iranian intervention in Syria to Assad’s generals, explained that if men could be motivated by religion, martyrdom, and political allegiance to ethnicity and sect to fight, an army can be raised and maintained for almost no expense. this “rustic” army can continue fighting despite taking enormous losses, maintains a high level of initiative on the field since it is not risk-averse in the slightest, and is not reliant on complex systems. So, Iranian military doctrine relies first on convincing volunteers (the IRGC) that only “the two sweetest things” (martyrdom and victory) await them, and that fighting and risking death is the most spiritual of experiences. To do this, they draw on both the Koran (which makes numerous appeals for men to die in battle), and the historical metaphor of Imam Hussein, key to Shi’a Muslims in particular. Emanuele Ottolenghi explains in his book on the IRGC,

Though he surely knew he stood no chance, Hussein nevertheless accepted death as the verdict of heaven, rather than offering his allegiance to Yazid and a political order he considered unjust. There is in his sacrifice a tragic submission to one’s destiny—no matter how cruel. There is defiance against evil, though evil will prevail. And there is a surrender of one’s own survival instincts to a greater cause.

The task is easier and the results better than most outside Iran can imagine. Without much coercion and only a year in power, the Islamic Republic was able to convince hundreds of thousands of young men to march to their deaths in what was then one of the more secularized Islamic polities. The IRGC believes they can easily achieve this feat again, because in their minds the survival instinct is not universal, but rather one of two instincts acting on man, the other being defiance. To them, it is just as natural for a man to fight, and in the process abnegate the material world as is it is for him to submit. All he needs to be given is the right impetus and to be put in the right situation, and he will “succumb” to the instinct of battle and die if necessary. Based on their historical experience, this belief is not unwarranted.

Of course, men willing to volunteer for near certain death are a finite resource. In the last two years of the Iran-Iraq War, Pasdaran recruitment drives were coming up short. This is the primary reason the Artesh, Iran’s conventional army, endures to this day as a primarily conscript force. First, to dispel a common myth about the Artesh, it is not a “dissident” force or involved in a “rivalry” with the IRGC. Since at least 1993, the clergy has effectively been in control of the Artesh. The force rarely makes public statements without citing the Ayatollah as justification, and its top officers have been taken into his inner circle as advisors. The IRGC, meanwhile, is completely dominant in the military hierarchy. Every defense minister since 1989 - when the IRGC ministry was dissolved - has been an IRGC general. A third of the Maljes are ex-IRGC, and the IRGC owns anywhere between 25% to 40% of the Iranian economy. The IRGC is the import agent of the Iranian military as a whole, and Artesh only gets what the IRGC gives it. It is useful to see the Artesh as “IRGC auxiliaries”.

These auxiliaries perform the role the IRGC does not want to perform - holding the front. Operating in tandem, Artesh acts as the “shield” while Pasdaran acts as the “sword”. Artesh is a defensive force, heavily armed but not as heavily armed as its opponents, intending to blunt enemy offensives. IRGC is an offensive force, consisting of highly motivated volunteers trained in infiltration tactics, who intend to use stealth and surprise to counterattack and disrupt the enemy.

Iranian tactics are inseparable from operations, and on that note there are two main operations Iran plans for: a war against Turkey and a war against the GCC/US. Nearly the entirety of Artesh’s “A” divisions (with properly maintained equipment) are stationed in Khuzestan or the Turkish border. The first war is strictly a land war, and the main theatre of operations is expected to be Syria. Artesh cannot be the “shield” in this war, so the IRGC’s proxies - also “revolutionary” troops paid very little and drawn mainly from the Shi’a and Palestinian populations - will be the shield to the Guard Corps’ sword. Their job is quite simple: hold in place until the Guards can counter-attack across a narrow frontage in a few key sectors and hopefully turn the Turks back.

The second war is far more apocalyptic and represents the lions’ share of Artesh/IRGC planning. Iran’s strategy in this war is foremost deterrent, because even in the event of an Iranian “victory” it would be disastrous for the country. Iranian doctrine calls for the swarming of the US Carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf using speedboats and ground-launched missiles, plus a wave of missiles against GCC. Cluster tipped munitions will crater airfields while the remainder will hit desalination plants which the Gulf relies on for most of its water supply. The IRGC-N will meanwhile deploy mines in the Strait of Hormuz, not just to “hold the oil supply hostage” as journalists suggest but to close the Gulf off from American reinforcements. IRGC commandos will deploy by sea and through the Iraqi border into Shi’a Eastern Saudi Arabia and instigate revolt there.

In its foreign wars, Iran essentially operates without a “sword” save for “elite” proxy forces like Liwa Fatemiyoun and Hezbollah. The majority of the militants it has raised (with a quantity over quality mindset) are incompetent at offensive operations. The first Iranian battleplan in Iraq called for the Iraqi PMU to drive through a city using conventional storming tactics. When found to be incompetent at this, the Iranians then switched tactics and mandated long sieges of cities and concentric attacks from all directions. The war has only taken this shape due to political and financial considerations in Iran itself: the regime is trying to win with minimal cost to Iranian lives themselves.

In raising these forces, simplicity is once again the friend of the IRGC. As it turns out, amidst any kind of political conflict, if you put guns in the hands of one faction a large number of their young men will sign up to fight. Iranian proxy groups have often been stereotyped as “fanatics” in line with the IRGC itself, but this is undeserved praise. A great number of them are motivated simply to protect their tribes, towns, families, and ethnic groups and do not display the zeal of their backers.

—– 12.2 —–2021-12-31 14:22:00+08:00:

It’s basically its own thing. Iranian control over and support for Yemen is greatly overstated since the country is effectively under a blockade.

13: What use does a modern flamethrower have on a modern battlefield?, submitted on 2021-12-30 19:00:58+08:00.

—– 13.1 —–2021-12-31 10:53:56+08:00:

Anti-subterranean warfare. The PLA decision to retain flamethrowers to present date was directly motivated by its experience in the Sino-Vietnamese War. In the earlier American Vietnam War, the US had a lot of trouble rooting out Vietnamese tunnel networks with “tunnel rats”. The PLA, being the inventor of tunnel warfare, had a simpler approach: flame the entrance and vents of the tunnel and everyone inside will suffocate to death.

With the rise of drones and musings from all sides that a great number of battles are going to move underground, flamethrowers are set to remain in the PLA arsenal for a long time.

—– 13.2 —–2021-12-31 14:22:23+08:00:

Fire is more efficient since it actively sucks the oxygen out of the tunnel system.

14: What kind of war was the Polish military preparing for in 1930s, submitted on 2021-12-30 19:15:37+08:00.

—– 14.1 —–2021-12-31 14:35:26+08:00:

Vietnam - yes which is why ARVN was such a disaster. PAVN, the North Vietnamese military, in contrast grew out of an insurgency that was opposed to the French and was advised mainly by the Communist Chinese and ex-IJA mercenaries.

Korea is something of an exception because, while the Japanese Korean Army (JKA) was absolutely a proxy unit, there were also countless Koreans who were trained as officers in the Imperial Japanese Army commanding Japanese troops. 8 of them became generals. The military performance of Egypt in 1948 certainly would have been better if the commander of British troops in France was named Bashir Malikwaleed and not Bernard Montgomery.

15: Is defending Taiwan the best option for the USA?, submitted on 2022-01-02 08:28:10+08:00.

—– 15.1 —–2022-01-03 10:59:03+08:00:

An Asian power with a Pacific fleet is an existential threat to the United States of America

What does this even mean? All regional powers in East Asia have a Pacific fleet.

—– 15.2 —–2022-01-03 11:04:39+08:00:

Take, for example, Imperial Japan during WW2 for a similar situation. Very swiftly they did knock out both Hong Kong, Singapore, and all of the European colonies in SEA once they joined the Axis.

Which they only did because the US, Netherlands, and UK had cut off their entire oil supply. Unless the US does the same thing to China, what motivation would China have to attack the US?

—– 15.3 —–2022-01-03 14:15:33+08:00:

No it was the opposite of chutzpah - they had no choice but to attack or they would face total economic collapse.