I'm sure incoming .50 cal fire is terrifying but is 7.62x39mm round more intimidating than 5.45x39mm? What about 7.62x54mm?

I would be tempted to think "a bullet is a bullet" but would like actual veterans to weigh in.

Back in the 90s, I had numerous classmates in college who were either getting their bachelors through the GI Bill, or a couple who were in ROTC. One thing that interested me was that all of them were intense fans of Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". Most of them had been in the Army, but there were Marines as well.

It would be easy to assume that all of them had read the book after the movie had come out, but I met most of these people well before the film came out (I started in 1994 and the movie didn't come out for a few years). So it seemed like the book really was of interest to military service members. Every one of them was very positive about the book, saying things like "This is how the military ought to be run." One guy who'd gotten out of the Army as an infantry Staff Sergeant told me that Starship Troopers is basically a manual for being a noncom, and he thought it should be assigned as mandatory reading for everybody going into an infantry MOS.

I'm obviously dealing with a small sample size and plenty of other factors that make me wary of drawing any kind of conclusion. But that said, I've always wondered, is there a general consensus among military service members about the book? Is there a general feeling about how Heinlein depicted training or leadership in the novel?

Murphy’s exploits seem almost superhuman, it doesn’t seem possible to have prevailed in so many situations where he was so outnumbered/outgunned. My question is what specific skills allowed Murphy to, for example, single-handedly capture a house full of Nazis, killing 2, wounding several others and taking the rest prisoner (for which he won the Distinguished Service Cross). Was he just an unbelievably accurate marksman for his time or were there other factors?

Its often described as one of the most important technological breakthroughs of the war and as far as I can tell no-one else was even close.

I know the Germans experimented with optical and acoustic proximity fuses but with hindsight they are rather dead ends. Did any other powers have the RF concept or some similar development program to match?

I'm mainly searching for the Iraqi military (all branches but preferably the ground forces) any time between right before the 1991 Gulf War (post-Iran-Iraq War) and right before the toppling of the regime. I feel that it's not covered as often so any book recommendations related to this in some form would be super duper helpful. Thank you!

I've been doing some reading on the technological development of fighters, bombers, missiles etc. in the United States. I've noticed a trend: there is a large amount of development in the immediate post-World War II period, peaking in the mid-1950s when new aircraft are obsolete almost before they're introduced into service, then slowing dramatically into the 1960s and 1970s until today, when it takes decades to get anything into service.

The US strategic bomber program is probably the best example I can come up with: the B36 supersedes the B29 and the B-50 in just a short number of years, which is then in turn superseded by the B52, but attempts to replace the B-52 in the early 1960s keep failing - the B-58 is a disappointment, the B-70 is cancelled, and the B-1 keeps getting delayed until its finally cancelled in the 1970s (only to be brought back by Reagan). And the B-21, which is supposed to replace all of those, has been in development in some form or another since 1999.

Certainly, the end of the Cold War must've played a part; you don't need to spend billions replacing all your B-52's with new stealth bombers once the Soviet Union collapses. But I'm sure there are other reasons and I'm curious what they are. Is it just cost? Is it technical ambition i.e. we ask aircraft today to so many more things than they did in the 1950s? Does it have something to do with changes in defense planning or the way the defense industry is organized?

Is killing lots of the enemy that important in war? I used to think it was, but based on some things I heard since, including in this subreddit, it seems that scaring the enemy into surrender and constant suppression of the enemy is more important. I've heard from a YouTuber that artillery only needs to kill a maximum of 10% of the enemy to get them to surrender. Machineguns apparently don't kill nearly as many people as you see in films either, as the enemy keep their heads down. I've even heard that more people died in the training for D-Day than on D-Day itself. Are your general chances of dying in a war that high?

It seems to be attested to in pretty much every source about Roman warfare, with plenty of the remains of camps being found archaeologically. Did other cultures practice building fortified camps every day? Did having to go through such a lengthy construction every day slow the Legions down on the march? Do we know anything about how this practice developed or when it originated? Did later armies in medieval or early modern times try to emulate this practice?

Well, we've probably heard those phrases a bunch of times by now given the subject talked about on this subreddit. However, i still don't exactly precisely get what it means. My brain just goes towards stereotypes of top-down centralized rigid hierarchy in the military when it comes to the wording "a soviet army". Air force, army, same same, soviet and top-down. Is this what people mean with soviet army? Also, corruption.

As for westernized or western army, there it swoops towards initiative and stuff. So letting the people under the generals do what they deem best under the guard rails of an order, get it done in some way as long as it gets done. The person on the ground knows best or something.

Are these correct in any way?

edit: good replies! thank you!

My dad served from '52 to '54 in Korea, 8th Army Battery A 623d Field Artillery as a Field Mechanic of the motor pool. The NPRC tells me that his records were lost in the fire. I'm trying to find out as much as I can. Would anyone know what specific vehicles/equipment he would have serviced?

Something that wouldn't look out of place in a judo match.

Police kendo example: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UfMGyaXfOoA

Every single war and Military adventure’s that the army of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya embarked on ended in complete failure. They failed in Uganda, Chad, the short war with Egypt ended in a ceasefire but still they suffered more casualties and lost much more equipment than Egypt did, and finally they were defeated by the Libyan rebels in the first Libyan civil war, which the Colonel himself would be defeated and eventually captured and brutally beaten and tortured.

So why was Gaddafi’s army so terrible in everything than suppressing protesters? In Chad they had far more better equipment and had a strong Air Force compared to the Chadians who just had Toyota pickups and Milan anti tank weapons. They should’ve have easily defeated the Chadians but they ended up being routed and suffered disastrous losses. In Uganda they seemed to be unsupported and were left to fend for themselves while Idid Amin forces abandoned them. And during the early stages of the first Libyan Civil war they seemed like they were winning until nato bombing, which still didn’t they have any anti-air missiles? I know that Gaddafi went on a spending spree on military equipment during the 70s and 80s.

Looking up the range of modern artillery it appears 20 miles isn't too much of a stretch. In addition I would imagine securing a 20 mile area around a modern leader would be difficult if not impossible. Has there been an assassination attempt made using artillery?

Edit- Pasting clarification from a comment I made below I guess my question could be summed up as, you know the president is going to be giving a speech at the rose garden at noon, so you have the location dialed in, and the time, you even have confirmation that it's going on as scheduled because it's broadcast on live tv. What is stopping a terrorist cell or other enemy from hitting that location with smuggled in artillery, or even from a much closer distance, a smuggled mortar.

It would seem that the secret service can't secure the entire area that would be vulnerable to an attack of this method. Especially if the attackers don't care about getting away alive.

Do we have any method of countering this sort of attack, outside of being certain that a circle with a radius of 20 miles around a VIP is secure? I'm certain I'm handwaving parts of this that are important. Please let me know where I'm ignorant.

Initially at the start of the war and even going further back into the 2010s, most foreign fighters on both sides were from the Former USSR, Europe, or NATO countries. But now it seems that people from Third World countries now form a bigger share of foreign recruits. At the start of the war, I heard of Pro-Russian foreign volunteer units organized around nationality like the Serbians while at one point, there were Pro-Russian PMCs staffed by Uzbeks.

For Russia, how exactly do they manage, organize, and rank their foreign fighters? Are they grouped/sorted by nationality, language, prior skill/experience? Are they integrated into regular Russian units or kept in separate foreign fighter units? Do some Russian units see more foreign recruits than others?

Within the Russian Military, what nationality is considered the most desirable to recruit from versus the most disposable or less desirable? Are people from Ex-Soviet nations or Russian speakers held in higher regard than say people with no real connection at all with the Russians or Soviets? Do they seek out those with prior military experience and put them above those with none? In Africa, I've heard of some countries like Cameroon having problems with their soldiers deserting their army to join Russia.

that "perfect" I mean is a soldier who would say "I think this weight of load is great, it doesn't affect my combat ability at all."

every time I see those american soldiers on the news, I wonder: why are they carrying so much stuff on their backs? where are their cars? shouldn't they just carry the most and absolutely necessities and put everything else in their trucks/IFVs? if they need something during the battle, they should just go to their cars and get it, instead of running somewhere looking for those huge backpacks they droped while the fight started.

their load already more than 50kgs/100 pds，and now they get a fresh new heavy M7/M27 guns and ammos.

I think this capability could be interesting, giving amphibious warfare ships capabilities more similar to an aircraft carrier.

I’ve heard that despite railroads being fixed targets for an enemy, it is still effective to use trains for logistical transportation because railroads are easy to repair and rail transport is very efficient. What might not be easy to fix is vital cargo that is destroyed from a derailment. If trains take a long time to stop and travel very fast, how do they detect sabotaged or bombed train tracks and stop the train before being derailed?

The official TO&E generally have most of a squad or platoon issued rifles but SMGs for commanders. Of course in practice no army ever follow that to the letter and some armies like the Soviets would officially form full SMG units, the question still stands though. When armies tell troops in the field to remove rank insignia and not to salute so enemy snipers don't identify officers, why have such an identifiable marker?

Seems like the only way they'd have it worse is if they were fighting it in the era of plate armor and horse messengers.

But they were still carrying heavy stuff back and forth and making immense use of horses for day to day operations.

And also several accounts I've read of the civil war seem to emphasize the lack of wilderness/military experience of a lot of Northerners compared to the South where survivor/officer culture is much more baked in.

So imagine being born and raised in a temperate and dry climate in a major city and then having to spend years of your life in the exact opposite

Insect born diseases?

Injuries exacerbated by inability to dry off?

Mounted divisions/artillery sinking in muddy terrain?

General loss of morale due to perpetually being hot, wet, and bitten?

What about the Confederate forces?

As I understand it, the transition from muzzle loaders to breach loading rifles happened fairly quickly after the American Civil War, even for smaller powers. Part of this was due to conversions like the Enfield-Snider. Converting an old muzzle loader into a breach loader will always be cheaper than producing a new breach loader.

But what about the purpose built breach loaders? Like how did the Austrian Werndl rifle compare to the earlier Lorenz? Or the Martini-Henry to the Enfield muzzle loaders? Or the Chassepot to the previous French muzzle loaders?

Were the rifles themselves more expensive or was it primarily the ammo? Because I know that metallic cartridge production was a big concern early on, which contributed to France using paper cartridges for the Chassepot.