Why is war so easy and apparently so difficult at the same time?This was the biggest blackpill when I got my commission, that war is actually fucking boring. There is usually like one or two possible axes of advance. There aren't normally a whole lot of options to choose from when responding to enemy action. The terrain and supplies and logistics and political state and ground state dictate so much that from platoon to theatre level, your options are always limited. In theory war is very easy, it's just a matter of getting all your ducks aligned in one of a handful of possible rows and then pushing but retards continually fuck it up.With very, very few exceptions, the outcome of any war is immediately apparent before it even starts with accurate information on both sides.Also being an officer sucks.
>>64622396https://clausewitzstudies.org/readings/OnWar1873/BK1ch07.html
I was in World War 1 in a past life. It was awesome.What war were you in?
>>64622409>Embarks on a campaign to defeat cholera outbreak>Dies of choleraWhat did he mean by this?
>>64622396>with accurate information on both sides.That's the neat part. Nobody gets to have accurate information in a timely manner. Trying to clean up the fog of war just means giving up initiative.
>>64622396Lt. Doomer over here lol
>>64622409>be 1831>cholera outbreak rolling in like a Russian armored column with no brakes>Prussia: “someone smart should handle this”>Clausewitz: “I have made a huge mistake”>sent to the frontier to contain disease>frontier is basically mud, despair, and dysentery cosplay>tasked with “quarantine operations”>aka “stand here and yell at people to stop dying”>Clausewitz trying to apply theory:>“friction is the reason armies fail”>friction in 1831:>people pooping themselves to death>tries his best>writes notes about disease spreading like bad cavalry charges>probably planning an appendix titled “On Vomit”>disease: “lol”>Clausewitz: *has entered the chat*>cholera: *has left him on read*>contracts cholera because PPE in 1831 = a stern look and a prayer>dies before finishing On War>prussia.exe stops responding>later historians:>“what a brilliant mind”>Clausewitz:>“I just wanted people to stop drinking river water”>modern readers:>“wow On War is dense”>bro was literally dying from cholera
>>64622468There's a reason that until like the 1870s, everything East of Berlin was considered a backwards wasteland. Even East Prussia used to be a shithole
>>64622396t.butterbar that gets buttblasted when OPFOR anticipates his every moveYou lack imagination, is your real problem.
>>64622396>With very, very few exceptions, the outcome of any war is immediately apparent before it even starts with accurate information on both sides.And therefore?
>>64622409>A powerful iron will overcomes this friction, it crushes the obstacles, but certainly the machine along with themmany such cases
>>64622416I have jumbled feelings of having taught men how to fight, beforea katana feels alarmingly natural in my hand (unlike, say, a rapier or a two-handed frankish sword), I have a knack for horses, am good at real time tactics whether it's vidya or paintball or whatever, I am a decent shot with a recurved bowidk, probably something in the Kamakura period
>>64622416I wasn't. I died in a horrible fire.
>>64622511I wish. That would mean we actually had a slot on the training matrix. As it is I have to try and sweet talk and wheedle a crusty ex-enlisted officer to give me some range time ever month.
>>64622471Still is, desu
>>64622650I misremembered where he died, I thought it was in East Prussia, was actually in Breslau.Point still stands anyway
>>64622416>be me>noguns>disinterested in history>get myself into a terrible misadventure>freezing to death>that spooky overheated feeling>fighting the urge to take off my jacket>blacking out from shock>flashbacks of humid ass jungle war>i'm shot in the stomach and dying>think "what was that for then">wake up in the real world ambulanceFor years I thought I was in Vietnam in a past life because thats the only jungle conflict I knew about, but the first time I ever held a FAL I had a Leo pointing at the TV moment. Guess I somehow managed to get BTFO in Rhodesia, 11/10 was worth it I'd do it again
>>64622409fpbpI remember reading an engineer's blog about project estimates where the engineer came to this ancient conclusion independently and analogized it like this:You set out to travel 500 miles wearing some good shoes and a backpack of provisions, you've calculated your miles walked per hour and your consumption of food per hour to get you to your journey with a good margin to spare. 50 miles in you're lost and it's raining while you cry beneath a tree with massive blisters on your feet and tentpoles you're still trying to figure out.And this was an analogy about a profession the practitioners do repeatedly for a living. When war comes like a thief in the night and a country scrambles to wage it everything is so much worse. Nobody knows what the fuck they are doing which is why competent militaries train constantly, and even that's just the minimum cope.
>>64622416Neolithic Tribal War, 12000bce, fertile crescent.It sucked, some dude killed me with a bone club and dragged my gf into a cave by her hair.
>>64622416Neolithic tribal conflict, 12000bce, i clubbed some retard and appropriated his wife for the damage he did to my bone club.
>>64622396>I got my commission, >There is usually like one or two possible axes of advanceThe absolute state.
>>64622421>What did he mean by this?>the longer you fight your enemy>the more you become him>Sun Tsu.Still a military genius after all these centuries. IF you know how to apply his wisdom.I think for op, something like>the oxen are slow>but the Earth is patient >anonWould be better suited to his "military intelligence " mind.
>>64623476Taht b was you? Fucker, I still miss her!
Neolithic tribal conflict, 12000bce, me say ankle bad and every woman at the camp alone with me
>>64622416Neolithic tribal war 12000bce, dressed up in she-shaman furs to stay in camp and sodomized this guy with a broken ankle. Died of aids.
>>64623607Berry pickers, e'rey time!
>>64622416Neolithic Tribal War, 12000bce, fertile crescent.I wasn't actually a combatant though, I was a passing seagull, I watched some fat faggot break his Gucci bone club over top of some other fuckboi's skull, then tard rage about it before going off to find and rape what he thought was the dead guy's gf, but was actually a draft dodger dressed in she-shaman furs who had stayed behind in camp, anyway I shat on him and then flew away
>>64623340keksame with me and an actual katana lol
>>64622396>There aren't normally a whole lot of options to choose from when responding to enemy action.except maybe forcing the enemy to respond to you instead but that's oddly very frowned upon for whatever reason nowadays, you're supposed to play gentleman with animals when you already know the only language your enemy understands
>>64622504>And therefore?The only winning move is not to play?
>>64624158You know what they call a war where only one side shows up to play?
>>64622504mainly the information 'I won't win this war' isn't obviously in many wars or is willfully ignored or is wrongly estimated through human bias.It can also be that people know they won't win and fuck you anyway. Fighting a doomed cause is rational in its way as a kind of long term selfless game theory move.
>>64622416I got zapped at Kursk '43
>>64622409Clausewitz's overall approach to war is a fascinatingly alien perspective from modern Western eyes. Synonymous now with his belief in war as a political tool, he thus had no qualms about wars of aggression and conquest, so long as the State knew why it was fighting and knew that the goal would be worth the price.He was also an advocate for total war, but whereas for us the phrase conjurs up genocidal wars of national survival or extermination like the Eastern Front in WWII, he clearly means it in the uniquely Napoleonic sense of national mobilization, but fighting by the traditional rules. He advocates for relentlessly pursuing the destruction of the enemy's armies, but then in the next breath talks about how it is neither necessary or even desirable to kill everyone, capturing them will do just fine.I'd like to pick his brain on modern theories of conflict.
>>64622416I think it was at sea somewhere, and I don't think it ended well for me. This is the only way I can explain my obsession with warships and the pleasure I derive from being near bodies of water, while also hating the thought of being out in the ocean.
>>64622416i was a mongolian raider for ghengis khan and you were my femboy
>>64622468Dead bodies in food and water shithwad clean pure water everyone knew raeto west big lies.org
>>64622396it is the curse of smart men to needlessly complicate that which is simple
>>64622396>The terrain and supplies and logistics and political state and ground state dictate so much that from platoon to theatre level, your options are always limitedcongrats, you've (re)discovered what Renaissance-era kings discoveredfurthermore,>6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.>10. Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.>11. On the other hand, the proximity of an army causes prices to go up; and high prices cause the people’s substance to be drained away.>12. When their substance is drained away, the peasantry will be afflicted by heavy exactions.>13, 14. With this loss of substance and exhaustion of strength, the homes of the people will be stripped bare, and three-tenths of their incomes will be dissipated; while Government expenses for broken chariots, worn-out horses, breast-plates and helmets, bows and arrows, spears and shields, protective mantlets, draught-oxen and heavy waggons, will amount to four-tenths of its total revenue.War is hideously expensive, a national-level expense that can only be borne by millions of people, therefore it is the Ultima Ratio Regum.You're only a small cog in the machine, and the decisive factors of victory are forged by millions of people over decades of consistent effort.if you understand this, you will understand war
>>64622396>In theory war is very easyLol no, anyone that has tried to organize 20 people knows trying to organize hundreds of thousands is a nightmare.
>>64622409Although, the description and ideation of many things like this (war as politics, experience as the most important factor, friction...) might be seen almost revolutionary, for the time, and still very applicable, there is something that I would have loved for Clausewitz to also describe. Instead of focussing on internal friction, and the importance of diminishing it, leave that on the side for a bit and focus on how to cause and exploit the enemy's friction.After all, I would contend that the point of war is not necesarily about you doing well, but making sure that the enemy becomes unable to fight, in a fast and efficient manner. Although, this is my armchair warrior take of course.
>>64625810That's essentially what the Marines mean by disrupting the OPFOR's OODA loop.
>>64625810Learning how to minimize your own friction inherently teaches you how to maximize the enemy's friction, because his pain points are mostly the same as yours.
>>64622396The hard part is building the machine. If you don't have the machine and you're just making it up as you go, it's going to be brittle, and a few failures in the wrong part can bring to a screeching halt. You need parts that are interchangeable to a significant degree, because some are always going to break. You need parts that work predictably and consistently, while still having enough initiative and common sense to work around the grit that inevitably gets into the machine, stuff like weather, terrain and equipment failure. You need redundancy because sometimes *just* the right combination of parts get smashed up by enemy action and such to put that part of the machine out of action just as you need it. You need a production line that churns out new parts faster than you lose them, and it has to be well orchestrated because some parts need more time to make, and some parts need to be in the machine for longer to become useful. You need steady and predictable inputs for the machine; fuel, ammo, other consumables. You need a whole half of the machine dedicated to delivering those inputs. It's really like building a giant Rube Goldberg machine where every part can spontaneously break or just fuck off because they're sick of your shit... except when you get it wrong, the outcomes range from humiliating loss of face on the international stage, to the total extinction of your nation. A small number of nations are competent in building and maintaining this sort of machine and when they find themselves in conflict, they consistently trounce their less mechanically gifted peers.
>>64625920And even when it works it costs a lot of money to keep it running, and there are always people trying to pull money away from it to spend on other things. It's the same problem faced by security experts in the corporate world: when companies aren't getting hacked they ask what they're paying you for, and when companies are getting hacked they ask what they're paying you for.
>>64622409Everyone reads Clausewitz, nobody read De Ligne. Who not only had a significantly more impressive career, he didn't end his life shitting himself to death in a ditch.
>>64622396This nigger is the type to get his troops killed in the next war. Zero self awareness
>>64624442Democrats.
>>64625783>organize hundreds of thousands is a nightmare.It's not, you have people for that. It's thier job.
>>64626361>each man commands 20>20 men command 20 commanders for 400 men>repeat until you have hundreds of thousands>5% are commanders>you need thousands of competent commanders that are there on merit allow>none are there simply because you need thousandsGood luck with that, in a company of 60 we had a hard time finding a 3rd commander and that was with the free market opportunities of recruiting from outside and offering good pay. Now try that when your hiring options are all offered the same shitty pay and all failed in the free market to end up there in the first place.
>>64626283>De Lignewhy would any one read what a belgian wrote?t.- belgian
