by Suff » 05 Feb 2024, 15:52
ND's (negligent discharges), are a real issue in the Army. One of the reasons for strong weapons discipline and harsh punishment if you don't comply. Familiarity breeds contempt and then people die.
Training regimes in the military are not meant to be nice collegial learning experiences. They are meant to beat into your thick skulls that you can do some things and you can't do others. It also conditions you not to say WTF when someone commands you to rush a machine gun nest knowing you have about a 5% chance of surviving. Even if you know that your sacrifice will save the entire company of hundreds of people.
Young people today have no reference point or point of contact with that life. Simply put we haven't had a war which requires that level of sacrifice for too many generations. So even a volunteer force is going to be next to useless in any kind of war. The only thing they will have is a familiarisation with weapons and tactics. No actual ability to defend or attack in a real war situation.
If most of NATO were attacked by a strong and determined force tomorrow, they'd be decimated in the first week. Only their technical weapons would keep them in the game until they could mount a credible resistance. Somewhat as it happened to Ukraine and that was with us funnelling them the weapons they needed to fight. Any competent enemy attacking NATO would go for the munitions stores and factories to make more munitions at the same time as destroying the weapons they were facing.
The reason everyone is beating the war drum? When they found the thousands of tanks on the German books were about 80% non combat ready. When the German anti tank weapons arrived in cardboard boxes which were falling apart and the batteries and battery contacts were green with rot and the weapons had to be stripped and serviced before use. As for munitions? Contrary to popular belief, ammunition is a volatile substance which degrades over time. Something which works perfectly when new can be totally dud or even burn so erratically that it can destroy the weapon firing it.
So the leaders are trying to create a situation where the focus of countries is away from how much money they can use to buy votes and back onto making sure that they can actually defend themselves if attacked. Because the reality is that their Eastern neighbour is not beyond taking advantage if weakness is detected. Without our support, Ukraine would have been overwhelmed in two weeks, Kiev would have fallen in a week. Only the man portable anti tank weapons the UK and US gave to Ukraine stopped that from happening.
This is the stark reality NATO leaders and commanders are facing. defence is not a negotiable situation. You either can or you cannot. Right now most of NATO just proved they cannot.
Fortunately for NATO most of the Russian hardware was sitting in huge airfields and other areas rusting away. That has stopped now and as they have destroyed a good 25% of that old equipment, the replacements will be of a totally different order of capability.
Feeling comfortable now? About as comfortable as NATO commanders.
There are 10 types of people in the world:
Those who understand Binary and those who do not.
