Guess most professionals will know of this site already:
Clausewitz HomepageBut for those who don't - you'll find many interesting papers here On War.
One by our very own LTC Goh!
Interesting to see them argue against the likes of Keegan and Van Creveld.
Enjoy.
BTW, LaoTiKo is aka Fairyland, Buzz, ptone50(@ warship1.com), Ascencion(@ ST Chat) and Jasper.......but SOME :D of you know that already.
Trinity Re-assertedI extracted one paragraph:
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| Herein lies the great value of the "trinitarian" approach to war. Exclusively rational models cannot account for the willingness of peoples to plunge their societies into the nightmarish chaos of war. One-dimensional "cultural" explanations like Keegan's miss the dynamic impact of calculating (if often stupid or self-centered) leaders. Technological models (and most discussions of "future war," RMA, etc., are heavily if not exclusively technology-driven) cannot describe the real wars which we have already experienced in the post-Cold War era. |
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| The courses of these wars have in fact been driven, not by technology (which remains essentially a tool), but by the complex interplay among opposing sets of popular emotions, military skills, and political calculations. |
For a couple of postings, LaoTiKo was aka Cuzz @ ST Chat. Why use LaoTiKo? It's either this or CheeKoPek.
Here's a story covering a Feb18, 2004 speech by Gen Richard B Myers.Of which I draw some lines to your attention:
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He told the audience that transformation is more than just new technologies. "It's much more about the cultural and intellectual" changes than technological ones, he said.
He said this points out a failure in government and the private sector. "We have been way too stovepiped," General Myers said, not reaching outside respective areas of expertise enough to amalgamate technologies or ideas from other fields.
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Before the twentieth century, most soldiers and sailors ended their careers armed as they were at the beginning. New weapons were introduced slowly, if at all, and most professionals resisted the uncertainties new arms introduced. It was better to stay with the tried and true than risk the lives of one's forces and the security of the nation on unproven instruments. In the nineteenth century, U.S. Army General Joseph Totten, Chief of the Corps of Engineers, told Congress that the army would adopt no new weapon until it had proven its worth in battle.25 But it could not prove its worth short of being adopted. This dilemma slowed the introduction of new weaponry and left Totten and his colleagues armed with the familiar and the comfortable weapons they had inherited.
By the second half of the twentieth century, this traditional suspicion of new weapons had changed to a reckless enthusiasm. Many weapons were assumed to be obsolescent on introduction. By the time they entered service, their successors were being planned. This was especially true in large-scale weapons systems such as ships and aircraft. It even found its way into thinking about less complex military technologies, such as radios and computers. Armed services in the United States found themselves competing with each other to claim precedence in fielding the same technology.26 Some critics have seen in the phenomenon evidence of planned obsolescence, the expectation that the life expectancy of a weapons system would be determined by the speed with which the next generation could be developed and introduced.
The trend toward planned obsolescence was compounded by the logic of large-scale development programs. Strategic weapons, such as ballistic missile submarines, intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers, and President's Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative have long lead times and consume vast resources. Even conventional arms, such as the M-1 Abrams tank and the C-5A transport aircraft are years in the making and profligate in their demands on resources.27 These arms are not weapons, but weapons systems. Their conceptualization is driven by systems theory, itself a byproduct of techniques of operations research developed in World War II. |
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| This does not mean that war is disappearing as a social institution. Far from it. But conventional, mechanized, high tech war between great powers, the kind of war that killed on an unprecedented scale in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and conditioned our current apprehensions of war, is indeed disappearing. It is difficult to imagine the circumstances under which two industrialized states would now risk the ruinous destruction of all out war with each other--not even conventional war, let alone nuclear war. |
From what I can gather, there seems a consensus among military analysts that the nature of WAR has change. This change is more or less tied to the driver for the conflicts.
Though the threat for conventional warfare is there, the likelihood of it occuring (between developed countries) is rare. Reason being the destructive powers that technology has built into modern weapons makes it a loss-loss endeavour and therefore inconcieveable to rational thinking leaders.
War is becoming more like what's happened in Kosovo, Iraq today, Palestine and Aceh. In this scenario, the instigators have nothing to loose, are not as organised and have the motivation/drive to carry the fight till death. The cause for these conflicts lies in powerful forces of racial bias, culture and religion.
Here, technology has given these ppl much more firepower at low prices and it is readily available. Therefore they are in a position to inflict great among of damage in comparison to their organisation size and make-up.
This effect is magnified many more times because of the way media tends to focus the news.
More importantly, because of their guerrilla tactics, it requires the incumbent to deploy alot more resources in order to limit their operations. Such conflicts though not on a scale like the war in Korean peninsula, can drag forever and become a huge drain on the economy.
Don't know what is the spillover effect on 'Aceh like' conflicts to SAF? Maybe SAF has the luxury to opt to stay out of this type of unconventional warfare.
This transformation to 3G doesn't seem to address the fight ahead for the world.
At the same time, coalition forces/alliances seems to be the order of the day in facing such unconventional threats. Singapore has a part to play in the world community.
Developing our own "networking" doesn't seem helpful to the SAF in integrating with other forces should it occur.
Singapore military complex in needing a revenue boost.......should at least find the most cost effective and in terms of marketing to the world, a better way to do so.
Bionix is one example of how not to go about it!
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More importantly, because of their guerrilla tactics, it requires the incumbent to deploy alot more resources in order to limit their operations. Such conflicts though not on a scale like the war in Korean peninsula, can drag forever and become a huge drain on the economy.
Don't know what is the spillover effect on 'Aceh like' conflicts to SAF? Maybe SAF has the luxury to opt to stay out of this type of unconventional warfare.
This transformation to 3G doesn't seem to address the fight ahead for the world.
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The likelihood of such guerrilla tactics encounter like those in Iraq and Chechnya in SG is slim, the reasons are becos that SG is a highly urbanised enviroment, 2nd the majority population is non Muslims( the threat for such tactics at the moment is from group like JI).
So at the moment, we could encounter such threat is either from peacekeeping mission or from the aftermath of a conventional warfare in foreign land.
But to say that a high tech army is useless against guerrilla tactics is not totally right, as the matter of fact, it actually increase the chances of winning such war.
For example UAV with their round the clock survelliance will reduce sneek attack and better in locating insurgents than w/o.
With NCW, commanders will be in better position to redeploy and deter such attack in much more efficient manner than using the old radio.
Another high tech equipment like the sniper locating radar will also reduce sniper attack.
Actually with high tech precision bombs and missiles actually reduce the collateral damage than with the conventional arty which the Russian is using against the Chechen insurgents which will actually increase int'l political outcry.
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At the same time, coalition forces/alliances seems to be the order of the day in facing such unconventional threats. Singapore has a part to play in the world community.
Developing our own "networking" doesn't seem helpful to the SAF in integrating with other forces should it occur.
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Actually it is the other way around, the reason is that many armies in the world will be going toward NCW, if SAF does not has a network/hardwares in place, how could they be in support with the other armies??
Yes, they might be some compatibility problem, but it is not something that couldn't be solved, just need some software patches for interfacing with different systems, better than no NCW hardware at all.
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Singapore military complex in needing a revenue boost.......should at least find the most cost effective and in terms of marketing to the world, a better way to do so.
Bionix is one example of how not to go about it! |
From what I have gather from your previous postings in the old forum, it seem that you believe that the SAF should not have wasted money on the development of Bionix and should have bought something off the shelves.
Well , it might actually cost more for having our own IFV than those from the shelve , but I dun think so.
The reason is that I heard that to be cost effective to have your own designed AFV, you need to produce at least 300 of them to offset the large outlay for R&D.
You are talking dollars and cents by per unit cost, but there is many other benefits you did not even consider:
Strategic benefits
1. You could have an IFV totally suited to your needs.( Most latest IFV in the mkt are too large)
2. Nobody will truly know the exact capability of Bionix.
3. Nobody will truly know the exact number of Bionix and we could build more if needed.
4.It will reduce the effect of arms embargo against us.
Economical benefits
1.It will produce jobs for thousands of ppl, including other support industial like metal fabrication etc.
2.We will gain expertise in such area and even into commercial uses.
3. The most impt point, money never leave SG becos we buy local, i.e. better current account.
4.We might actually earn revenue by selling them oversea, for example our small arms are sold worldwide, our FH-88/2000 was sold to Indon and Turkey(few hundreds FH-2000 under licenced produced), our Terrex and ATTC are being evaluated by Turkish at the moment, Spider LSV to India etc.
Therefore, the abovementioned benefits are something you will not gain by buying off the shelves from oversea.