Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: cash%convex@uunet.UU.NET (Peter Cash)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: German had the best weapons (was Re: M4 Tank Info)
Summary: yeah, like he said!
Message-ID: <1990Jun4.202621.7240@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 4 Jun 90 20:26:21 GMT
References: <15420@cbnews.ATT.COM> <15735@cbnews.ATT.COM> <15927@cbnews.ATT.COM> <16133@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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From: cash%convex@uunet.UU.NET (Peter Cash)

In article <16133@cbnews.ATT.COM> muchow@ns.network.com (Jim Muchow) writes:

>Any claim that the Germans had the best weapons on the planet during
>WWII is irrelevant for three reasons. The first is that the men operating
>the weapons must be trained to do so optimally. The second is that the
>officers in command of the men must be capable of coercing and using
>that optimal performance (not just the lower echelons of officers, but
>also the higher ups). Thirdly, the weapon in question must be able to
>be produced in sufficient numbers to actually make a difference 
>(victory or defeat).

Well, yes...that was exactly my point (or the point I was trying to make,
at any rate). The German military planners thought that mere technical
superiority is enough to win a war; as Jim Muchow points out, reliability,
quantity and trained operators are examples of other factors that are also
crucially important.

I also attempted to argue that our own military planners are making the
same mistake (and Jim seems to agree with this also).  

But perhaps we should go a step further than saying that our military
planning and procurement effort is mistaken and wrong-headed; perhaps we
should say that it has nothing to do with military readiness at all.  I
think that the purchase of so many high-tech weapons systems that could
never be put into production at the quantity levels required by a modern
war can mean only one thing: our military planners are acting from purely
economic motives, and do not really believe that any of this technology
will be tested on the battlefield.

I sure hope they're right.


--
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             |      Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist.     |
Peter Cash   |       (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein)      |cash@convex.com
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