One thing I like to do is to look at predictions of the future written in the past.
I’m reading “The British way in warfare”, written in 1930, which talks about the future of armaments. I’m surprised at how good it is for its time.
I’ll start by deliberately misinterpreting here, and saying that the ultimate aim of warfare is to end up with a bigger army than your opponents. mollwollfumble says that one way to do that is to lose the first battle, thus convincing your government who owns the purse strings that the army needs more funding.
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Now to the predictions.
“The porogress of scientific discovery and invention is so fast as to change all traditional concept of warfare”.
“Lurid pictures in the press include cities wiped out by new forms of explosives, armies suffocated by new gases, of peoples annihilated by bacilli”
These in a single short sentence we have the origins of the nuclear, biological and chemical ban. The weapons of mass destruction.
“The possibilities of atomic energy and radio transcend even those speculations.”
Atomic weapons are already invisaged, in 1930.
The author is pro-mechanisation and anti-infantry (with one exception). Mere numbers of infantry will never win a war.
“Aircraft … air launched torpedo” will become more important. “The plane is a greater potential threat to seaborne commerce than ever was the U-boat”.
Injuring an enemy (eg. a ship) is more debilitating to an enemy than killing them. “Paralysis, rather than destruction, is the true aim in war. Actual damage is not necessary, the fear of it will suffice”.
This foreshadows the cold war.
“The utilisation of new weapons of war has followed far behind the period at which they were technically possible.”
“Nearly every development that upset calculation in the Great War was foreshadowed by the Russo-Japanese War. … It did not require a seer to foretell the trenches and stagnation of the Great War”. “Even the factors that brought about the collapse of the Germanic alliance were repeated”
“Speculation of the nature of another war is not vain”.
The author rules out the “death ray” as a viable weapon of war.
“Germ warfare can be discarded even more emphatically”.
“Gas is in a different category” but “chemists tell us that the discovery of entirely new gases is unlikely”.
mollwollfumble says that that turned out to be both right and wrong. Nerve gases were developed in 1936, but are aerosols rather than true gases.
“The use of mustard gas in another war would be a hindrance to the infantry”. In other words, not a good idea.
The way of the future is “high speed tanks” as well as a lightly armoured mechanized transport. Not horses or foot soldiers.
mollwollfumble sees this (and other parts of the book) as foreshadowing the blitz, the tank battles of Africa, and the six day war.
Army organisation needs a complete revamp to best use this mechanisation. eg. don’t use tanks as a support for infantry.
“The machine gun has proved itself the dominating weapon on modern battlefields and they should not be limited to sixteen per battalion”.
“The need for the existing field gun is past”.
“Heavy artillery has notably increased in range” but “their use is questionable in view of the development of air bombers”.
Air bombers “can make themselves an impossible target by flying low”.
mollwollfumble wonders why this suggestion was never taken up. Low flying bombers would require less fighter protection and less armour against ack-ack guns and shoulder-launched missiles. As well being the easiest way to acurately hit a target.
“The wider role of mobility and offensive power lies in the air”.
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Other things from the book.
Although infantry should be mostly scrapped, the author recommends a new force of “light infantry”, elite infantry troops that can not just hold a position or conduct sabotage, but range widely.
The author also gives examples where a weaker army won by conducting many demoralising raids on a stronger force.
Some definitions from the book. The author put a lot of effort into getting a perfect definition of “strategy”. Made necery by the separation of military from government.
- “Strategy is the art of the general”
- “Strategy is the art of distributing military means to fulfil the ends of policy”
- “Grand tactics” is “the combination of movements preparatory to a battle”
- “Grand strategy” is “policy which governs the conduct of war”
- The “purpose” of strategy “is to diminish the possibility of resistance, exploiting the elements of movement and surprise”
- “The perfection of strategy is to destroy the enemy’s armed forces by surrender – without any fighting”
mollwollfumble says this last one is interesting. The ideal military strategy is not to fight.
Forward progress in war should take “the line of least resistance”, avoiding traps because traps are not the line of least resistance.
A direct approach into battle “is the worst of all military risks” because all other hazards – “mountain, desert, swamp, loss of supplies” – are calculable, unlike human resistance.
“The advent of aircraft” exposed “formerly hidden strategic manoeuvres” and “opened fresh opportunities for deception”.
The author sees Britain as having the most advanced army in the world in 1930 and thereafter.
mollwollfumble says “Oops”.