As far as I know artillery was very rare in ancient battles, and during the renaissance and the early modern period it was more of a wild card, mostly being used in sieges rather than field battles. During the late 1600s and early 1700s I know that Vauban came up with a new doctrine for artillery usage in siege battles and in the mid 1700s Gribeauval standardized field guns and made them lighter. During the Napoleonic wars artillery seemed to play a large role, and the emergence of howitzers and very early rocket artillery took place. But when was the moment that you could confidently say that without significant artillery one side would clearly lose before the war even began?

I’d appreciate any reading materials you could suggest.

At least on internet circles, there is a fairly well known and widely accepted story about the NATO PDWs (the MP7 and P90), which is that the VDV started getting body armour widely issued and NATO was concerned that the 9mm sidearms and SMGs that backline troops carried were going to be ineffective against said troops, and so wanted a high velocity pistol sized cartridge and accompanying weapon to equip the backline troops. Then the cold war ended, VDV in West Germany stopped being an issue and so they were never procured in numbers, and nowadays everyone has a carbine firing intermediate calibre rounds anyway, so PDWs ended up being used basically as spec ops and close security weapons due to their compactness. This story is supported by Forgotten Weapons' videos on the subjects, and I personally consider Ian McCollum's videos to be some of the best secondary sources out there for firearms and firearms history, which gives credibility to the story

I however have seen some videos and comments here and elsewhere that reject this narrative, positing that VDV body armour was never a major concern and that the PDW project was instead an attempt to just create a better general purpose pistol round compared to 9mm. They normally point to the NATO testing reports, which did not test against Soviet body armour or direct equivalents, as evidence for this viewpoint. However testing reports are fairly poor sources for the overall aims of a project, typically the language is very technical and dense and don't directly talk to the overall intentions but rather the direct results of the tests.

Personally I can see both ways, but I've been trying to find some sources on the matter to clear this up and I haven't been able to find any, either contemporary NATO sources (news articles, internal memos, etc) about the project and their aims or well referenced secondary sources discussing the project afterwards. If anyone has links or suggestions on where to look for said sources those would be much appreciated.

I had one a few years ago but i lost it and can't find it again.

While they are obviously in use in long term bases in the Middle East both sides of both ongoing conflicts have been using normal relatively affordable PTZ surveillance cameras on high poles or buildings or disguised for defensive observation and ambushes. These larger gimple cameras have much better optics an all but the best and largest observation drones and are EW proof due to running hardline cables and are all very much off the shelf.

Has this been officially noted or is the plan to use them on an ad hoc contractor basis like we used them in Iraq?

Or has the focus on maneuver warfare and the western distaste for protracted static fighting on a long frontline run too much counter to such a static kind of asset.

I suppose the woodland vests make some sense since those are harder to roll out compared to uniforms or helmet covers.

But with Somalia and Desert Storm basically ten years earlier, there seem to be a lot more pictures of marines with matching 5-color uniforms and vests. What happened to all of those appropriately colored vests in those ten years?

And as a side question, how are things like when to issue appropriate gear and paint vehicles the right color for upcoming deployments decided?

Deng Xiaoping is known for reducing military spending to focus on developing China's economy Post-Mao. But when the Cold War was still underway and the threat of the Soviet Union was still present, what was China's military's modernization plan at the time? Was there any idea of what China hoped the PLA would be like by the 1990s or early 2000s if the Cold War never ended?

Obviously both systems have disadvantages, silos are harder to infiltrate but visible from satellite and susceptible to preemptive strike. Mobile launchers are mobile but can be saboted easier and I feel like technical intelligence gathering on them would be easier too.

I have two questions tho:

1. Where did this difference beetwen US and USSR nuclear strategies come from? Is there any literature or documents on differences beetwen nuclear silos and mobile ICBM systems and why/how did those two countries decide on them?

2. Was there ever a plan by intelligence agencies to sabotage mobile ICBM launchers in case of nuclear war? I'm guessing the risk of such operation would be too high, considering the amount of warheads, stopping 10 or 20 wouldn't help much but maybe I'm wrong. And was there a plan to do the same to nuclear silos by the soviets?

I don't know if this is quite the right place for this, but I know in the 80s, the 9th infantry division was turned into a high-technology testbed, but I haven't been able to find much on what they actually had(or were supposed to have). If anyone has any sources, I'd be very thankful.

I imagine a conventional battle would be no issue, if they can even organize that kind of resistance, but what about guerilla warfare and civil resistance? Is the plan extermination, assimilation, conflict resolution with settler groups? Are there plans to deal with disease or to take over local resources?

How do insurgencies get and sustain heavy weapons, like anti-tank missiles, heavy machine guns, etc. Especially in countries with draconian gun control laws where most of the weapons will be controlled by the military.

The insurgency in Myanmar, for example, the rebels generally are lacking heavy weapons and mostly using hunting rifles or some captured weapons from the armed forces, but still basically lack meaningful heavy weapons.

On the other hand, the Libyan and Syrian rebels got and sustained anti-tank missiles, heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, anti-aircraft missiles, artillery, and other heavy weapons.

It seems like, barring foreign intervention, you would quickly deplete reloads for any captured weapons and be stuck with small arms.

So, in the case of if a potential war plays out, where does the United Nations Command play a role in any war with the North, if any at all? Does it merge under the ROK/US CFC, or it has different functions in wartime scenarios?

Most IFVs nowadays, such as Bradley and Puma, have a two-men turret for better situational awareness. But France's VBCI has a turret that only has the gunner The VBCI only has 2 crews, the driver and the gunner. Why is the VBCI different from most other country's IFVs? Does it have something to do with their doctrine?

Super niche question and I get that this is quasi-battle boarding but between feudal Japan and Ayutthaya in the late 16th century and early 17th century, who was the greater power? Who was the superior nation in terms of internal political stability, external political influence, economic wealth, and military strength?

The coallition only lost 27 men but still lost the battle. Why?

We know that the SAA right now is basically a ragtag group of Praetorian guards, Iranian militiamen, ex rebels, shabiha and whatever they could press gang into service. But equipment wise, are they better compared to 2011? Did the Russian surge help them upgrade?

I was reading through an old book of mine about the USS North Carolina over the weekend. I got to the section on her being torpedoed in the attack on the USS Hornet, and I noticed something. The distance between vessels at the time was miles. And the entire strike group was many miles wide. Why do we see CSGs so tightly bunched together now? Is that only for photo ops, or OPSEC when near shore? Or do we keep them that close now? If so, why?

I'm wondering what the origin to the Admiral Kuznetsov was, and I haven't really found a great answer as to the "why" online. From my understanding the main selling point of an aircraft carrier is power projection overseas, which is necessary for a nation like the US or UK to engage in targets around the world. But for a power like the USSR and now Russia, it feels like there was never really a need to have that sort of power projection capability. Any nation Russia would realistically be fighting in or near would be connected to it by land, and direct conflict with anything else would be a nuclear exchange. Surely the Soviet military planners realized there was no way for the USSR to catch up to the NATO or even US navies by the point it was being built. It just feels like buying a super expensive deluxe suitcase with all the whistles and bells when you've never taken an overnight trip and have no plans to do so in the future.

How did Germans were able to deal with cotton shortages for its troops? Cotton obviously is needed for basic textile production for uniforms like undergarments, socks, shirts, jackets etc., but Germany during both wars was under strict naval blockade or state of war with key cotton producers which meant years of without reliable (or not be able to procure at all) cotton deliveries from abroad. What was their solution to this shortages?

What were the differences between how the Heer and the Waffen SS fought and their doctrine in 1944-45?

I've heard anecdotally that while the Waffen-SS weren't the super soldiers their propaganda claimed to be, a lot of veterans thought of them as 'something else', not in the sense that they were better but that they were just different to fight.

Most estimates seem to have Taiwan in the 2% to 2.5% of GDP range. Is it a legitimate criticism to say that they should be spending more?

I read a fully bonkers statistic earlier that put the average age of a soldier in the UAF at 43 right now. As someone roughly in that age bracket, I can safely say that my body would be very unhappy at the mere idea of anything remotely soldierly but is there any actual evidence as to how well/badly the middle-aged stack up during wartime?

Given how expensive making armor was before the Industrial Revolution, it would make sense for people to get the most use out of each piece possible. Of course in the aftermath of a battle there probably would be opportunities for lower class soldiers to pickup armor from dead enemies. On the other hand nobles would probably not like other nobles dead bodies being looted (sets a bad example that might give others ideas) so they might try and restrict their soldiers from doing that. Medieval Europe does come across as the kind of place to make those kind of restrictions, whereas other places like China or the Middle East might be more practical about letting their soldiers take armor from dead enemies.

I’ve recently become interested in the air war of the second part of the Chinese civil war (mainly because from my knowledge ww2 Japanese aircraft were used by both sides). I can’t find any sources on it or even what the two parties were doing with their aircraft since the nationalists air force disbanded in 1945 according to Wikipedia and the People’s Liberation Army Air Force was formed after the war and I have no idea what can before.

I was heavily relying on the Combined Arms Research Library and Philippine Veterans Organization Online Catalog to find sources on the matter. Are there any other catalogs I should be aware of especially since I am after the logistics and aftermath of the battle, considering my thesis is related to the activities conducted by the Philippine Civil Affairs Unit.

In my research on the topic, I have come across many different takes on the subject, often contradictory to each other. What I was able to discern so far is this and I'm curious as to how accurate these impressions are:

1. Slings: Very cheap to make and surprisingly powerful. Supposedly the only indigenous American weapon the Spanish Conquistadors feared, because getting hit by a very fast rock hurts even when you're in armor. I've heard some claims that slingers often outranged archers, though I'd assume that depends A LOT on the skill and specific equipment of the archers and slingers in question. What bows are the archaers using? Do the slingers have clay bullets, rocks or lead projectiles like the Romans used them? But slings require more skill to use than bows and more space as well, so slingers might not have been very effective when deployed on walls or in dense forests. Also, I have never seen any mention of mounted slingers anywhere, so I just assume you can't use a sling on horseback. That makes them sound potentially very useful against horse archers. Are there any accounts of slingers being used in this way?
2. Javelins: Short range, remarkably powerful, especially when used in conjunction with an Atlatl. Such weapons have been used in the paleolithic to hunt mammoths. The armies of the Roman Republic also make it look like they'd be fairly easy to use. AFAIK Javelins were used by Velites, soldiers recruited from the poorest citizens who presumably didn't have much time to train with them, and by Hastati and Principes, who were melee troops using Javelins to soften up enemy lines beforehand. So if they got satisfactory performance out of their javelins, they can't have been that difficult to use.
3. Bows: Require lots of skill to use, though apparently not as much as slings. Archers may have been able to achieve a high rate of fire releases, but only for a short period of time before their arms start aching very badly. Their accuracy seems to be vastly overstated in modern media, because we tend to look at archery done for sports with high quality arrows. Historic military archers meanwhile needed loads of arrows and would usually aim at groups of enemy soldiers, so volume > accuracy. Also, archers don't need a lot of space to shoot, so they can be packed in large numbers on walls and make use of small firing ports.
4. Crossbows: Kind of like guns in that they're more complex to manufacture than all of the above, but by far the easiest to use. Some crossbows seem to have been extremely powerful as well, so much so that you'd need a hand crank to draw them. And they could shoot broken arrows, short bolts as well as stones and lead bullets too.

One thing I noticed is that complexity seems to have been outsourced from the shooter to the weapon throughout history. Ranged weapons got ever more complex to make, but ever easier to use.

I recently finished The Pentomic Era by Bacevich and Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife so I was curious to know more about the more conventional side of the U.S. Army throughout the 1960s. Any book suggestions on this? Its a bit difficult to find some.

I’m curious with the conflicts in the world today why so many militaries around the world are still very “top-heavy”, consolidating decision making/tactically relevant intelligence at higher levels than the soldiers on the line executing orders?

The war in Ukraine is a great example of this as especially early in the war the flaws of a top-heavy military were on display with entire columns of Russian forces grinding to a halt once enough flag officers became casualties. Troops on the ground that surrendered reporting that they had no idea what capabilities the enemy had in the area they were operating in or what tactics they would likely apply.

My views on this are probably biased but it just generally seems that at the small-unit level, western (especially US) style tactics and leadership philosophy give better tactical results and allow for more battlefield flexibility therefore leading to better operational/strategic level outcomes and lower casualty rates which over time can be a huge benefit in a war of attrition.