Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
Charlie's posts Post Back to profile
Top-level
Archangel Zeriel

@graydon @cstross

> anything seen gets ground up by artillery from beyond rifle range. It's a pure mass contest.

Not only is this true, but I suspect from a purely strategic point of view that "drones", like "aircraft" before them, are essentially just a special case of "artillery".

14 August at 14:52 | Wall-to-wall | Open on tenforward.social
6 comments
Graydon

@archangelzeriel @cstross That's the offensive function.

The most important function of aircraft AND drones is reconnaissance. Second most important is preventing the other guy from doing reconnaissance. Offensive functions are strictly tertiary.

14 August at 14:54 | Open on canada.masto.host
Archangel Zeriel

@graydon @cstross

The smart-alek in me wants to say that when I think of "artillery" in a military context my mind is including the forward observers, spotters, etc as part of the concept -- observation/recon is part of "artillery", too, in the offensive sense (in that it's significantly more effective when you can aim it accurately).

There's probably a whole pointless semantic discussion on where "recon/counter-recon" fits into the modern military metaphor.

But I do take your point. :D

(also, you're only the second person named "Graydon" I've ever interacted with, and I have to keep reminding myself that you're not a voice actor I went to college with)

@graydon @cstross

The smart-alek in me wants to say that when I think of "artillery" in a military context my mind is including the forward observers, spotters, etc as part of the concept -- observation/recon is part of "artillery", too, in the offensive sense (in that it's significantly more effective when you can aim it accurately).

15 August at 13:20 | Open on tenforward.social
Graydon

@archangelzeriel @cstross Artillery _as an arm_ absolutely includes all that "what to shoot?" stuff.

Reconnaissance _as a function_ is bigger, it's maintaining the awareness of the commanders so there's some possibility of a productive decision. There's a reason Sun Tzu goes on and on about knowing yourself and knowing the enemy and has unkind things to say about generals who won't pay for spies.

(Definitely not a voice actor. Nothing to do with the Rust language, either.)

15 August at 15:16 | Open on canada.masto.host
Archangel Zeriel

@graydon @cstross

Honestly, my actual problem is that I'm so ensconced in a particular mindset from being both an amateur military historian and an avid wargame player, but who doesn't talk about those things often in spaces not also 100% colonized by war nerds, that "recon" has moved from "one of the tentpoles of successful military operations" to "so self-evidently important that one forgets about it as a separate concept because not having it means you lose, full stop." in my brain meats.

15 August at 16:19 | Open on tenforward.social
Graydon

@archangelzeriel @cstross The pros have that exact same problem of the head-meats.

Also getting a bit fixated on the how of doing the thing as should be presently customary, which is why cavalry-in-a-can comes as a shock.

(I maintain that the easiest and best way to think of drones is just that; they have all the functions and the same limitations as classic "horse guns and foot" cavalry. And the mental images of a bunch of grunts lugging around a can of compressed horse soldier are funny.)

15 August at 16:43 | Open on canada.masto.host
Archangel Zeriel

@graydon @cstross

(RE: cavalry-in-a-can, there was at least one D&D game in which that actually happened, except it involved a glass jar, my paladin, and the "Gaseous Form" spell.

I am assuredly not the only person to have thought of this, and I've seen similar tactics told elsewhere on ye olde internet)

15 August at 17:19 | Open on tenforward.social
Go Up