Tag: Essay

Claude Larson and Library Music

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There lived a German musician named Klaus Netzle who more often went by the stage name Claude Larson. Although Netzle had many more aliases, as befit a stock music composer.

I find his work rather interesting. Meant as disposable background music, he wrote in many genres, and composed and performed many, many songs. Him and others like him made albums that filled vast business libraries but, with few exceptions, were not known to the general public until the internet.

I give you one of my favorite Claude Larson tracks:

The Hard Lesson

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The Ukrainian counteroffensive has not gained as much ground as hoped for. It’s important to see, as these respected experts did, that it’s not just a matter of insufficient equipment. Anyway, for a bit of Fuldapocalyptic contemporary commentary.

  • There’s the Russians getting better after their initial swing and a miss. Especially as…
  • There’s the problem that everyone, including the US, would struggle with an offensive against an opponent that has had months to fortify an inevitable and obvious avenue of approach over flat terrain
  • There’s the inherent material issues. After all, the last such offense I can think of that was a huge offensive against an opponent materially better in most ways was… the Battle of the Bulge. Which didn’t go so well for the attacker and devolved into a grindfest pretty quickly.
  • But there’s also the issues with Ukraine’s own military. Again, this isn’t something really to blame. Everyone (just look at Kasserine Pass) would struggle with complex operations after quickly raising an army in a rapid desperate period of total war. Yet mentioning these very real issues and mentioning their struggles as being due to something other than just the poor stingy west not giving them 200000000 tanks and a legion of Imperial Knights attracts a lot of angry criticism.
  • Ukrainians have every reason not to think like this, but from a western perspective, having a Ukraine with NATO/similar committment but without a bombed out strip of land in its east is vastly preferable to a Ukraine with said strip of land but still locked in a conflict.

The Cluster Debate

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So the Americans have provided cluster weapons to Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, the internet debates around them have not been the most fruitful or productive. The consistent opponents are one thing in that I find their arguments as flawed as they are understandable. Yes, it’s perfectly fine to be concerned about unexploded ordnance and collateral damage-as if there wasn’t plenty of that already, most of it caused by…. someone other than Ukraine.

But the more interesting thing to me has been the talk, largely from OSINT accounts, of treating clusters as an unstoppable superweapon. Between this and the Bayraktar TB2 slobbering of days past, it’s as big a sign as Michael Jordan’s baseball career that excellent talent in one area doesn’t equal having it in another. Anyway,

  • Concern about unexploded bomblets, and not just for collateral reasons, is valid.
  • Clusters are situational and even in the past before “normal” shells got better designed, had many situations where they were worse. They also had some where they were better.
  • Cluster shells will still be extremely useful, if only because they’re a fresh source of things that things that go boom.

Rediscovering Attrition

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Every so often an observer will encounter a war (the Ukraine conflict being the most recent) and then find that numbers, firepower, and the dreaded capital-A Attrition still matter, as they always have. Some of this is just seeing technological hype being inevitably worn down by realistic imperfection. But more of it is just because of the annoying way the Liddell-Hart/Boyd/Lind “MANEUVER WAR” crowd has wormed its way into military discourse.

Ok, so a lot of it is just WWII mythology of the Germans running circles around the French. But guess who’s amplified all that? Yep, the maneuverists. And in Liddell Hart’s case going all the way back to the first ever recorded battles where the “Indirect Approach” always won. So much as how people become legitimately shocked when, after a long dose of Pierre Spreyism, it turns out a new piece of military equipment actually works, they also become shocked when it turns out that fortifications are indeed viable if not essential, that the Big Breakthrough is hard, that maneuver has limits, and that there are few substitutes for force and attrition.

Studying actual doctrine even in maneuverist periods doesn’t make one surprised. After all, a Sov Kras Don Circ Heavy Opfor operational maneuver group gets going with a massive breakthrough concentration of firepower and stays going through mobile organic firepower. But going by popular media does.

On The Term “Thunder Run”

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One of the most curious military terms is “Thunder Run”. It originally referred to an armored push into Baghdad in 2003. It has since come to generally mean “any fast, tank-heavy offensive, especially into closed terrain where tanks are otherwise not the most suited.” Especially one that’s inherently high-risk, as this was. It takes nothing away from the skill and courage of the 2003 Thunder Runners to point out that the conventional Iraqi army in that period was massively flawed and worn-out and that it could have easily failed against a more capable opponent, as happened in a similar attempt in the Yom Kippur War.

However, I find it even more interesting in terms of etymology. See, the name “Thunder Run” is pretty self-descriptive. It’s an attack that’s swift like a thunderbolt and involves dozens of thundering-ly loud armored vehicles running towards the opponent. In other words, its something that even someone with little such experience can grasp the meaning of.

World War III Sports

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With the actual war done, the WW31987 blog turns its attention to the really important things: Sports! My personal hunches, since this is in July/August.

  • MLB stops the season and probably either voids it (sure beats the real life World Series cancelations of the 94 strike and the 1904 boycott), or goes straight to the playoffs after the war ends.
  • The NFL hasn’t started yet and won’t start the first game until the second week of September, and the war ends in late August. (Ironically, there was a disruptive strike that year, dunno how the war would affect that). Given its lucrative nature, I can see a wait and see approach followed by starting the season after the war.
  • The NBA and NHL start in the late fall and are thus largely unaffected.
  • For European soccer leagues, I’d say it depends on the country. The historical Bundesliga started several days before the war would have begun, though a crisis could have averted it. My hunch is that the countries not directly hit (ie, France, etc…, would just launch a delayed and possibly shortened season after the war’s end), while Germany, the nuke victims, and the Scandanavian countries that were invaded would wait and possibly cancel the seasons.

One footnote: 2020 was the historical season that Mike Trout qualified for the Hall of Fame (played in at least 10 seasons). With obvious fears of the season not being able to be completed due to COVID, there was talk as if it would count as official. The Hall responded by saying that 1994 counted for the sake of eligibility, and thus even a World Series less 2020 would as well. Or a World Series-less 1987.

Big Vs. Little Targeteering

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With regards to unguided bombs, one of those things that’s still a little iffy to me is what’s more suited for a few big bombs and what’s for a bunch of little ones. I can guess, with something like a strongpoint or large building being viewed as worthy of a giant demolisher while a group of enemy infantry/soft-skins is better suited for a large stick of small fragmentation ones.

I also have this suspicion that general purpose bombs are acceptable for most aerial targets. This is backed up by the data from the Gulf Wars showing the bulk of dropped bombs being Mk82s and derivatives. And of course, anything that can explode is not useless. Both of these below have uses and both can be deadly.

A Brief History (And Explanation) of Rocket Tossing

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Anyone who has recently seen any footage of helicopters in Ukraine has witnessed what I call “Rocket Tossing”. The helicopter lifts its nose, fires off a ton of rockets indirectly, and then peels away. It has the impression of an improvised, ineffective tactic. But it’s not the former and is arguably not the latter.

It’s important to note that doctrine of the 198X Fuldapocalypse era, both western and eastern, details rocket tossing at length. The huge helicopter losses of Vietnam, the precedent of the Iran Iraq War (where the tactic was used constantly), and that air defense wasn’t exactly getting worse all made for sound reasons to know it. So indirect helicopter fire isn’t that surprising.

So how effective is it? Well, it’s basically a light multiple rocket launcher that can fly. Unguided multiple rocket launchers are area weapons, optimized to cover a large piece of land quickly at the expense of long-term rate of fire. (This is why rockets are considered ideal for chemical warfare). Ideal? Not really. Cost-effective? Probably not. But useless? Nah.

RIP Jim Brown

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Jim Brown, former Cleveland Browns football player, activist, actor, and mixed martial arts commentator, has just passed away. RIP to a football legend. Calling him the greatest running back of all time is not particularly controversial, unlike other such claims. He rushed for more yards per game than anyone else at his position and did so in a low-offense era.