Guns the great equalizer of Combat, and the destroyers of Honor ?
What does humping a M-60 machine gun on long ruck marches have to do with how easy it is to use in combat to kill people?
No one except this imagined poster you and aktarian have conjured up is saying that soldiers don't have to be fit.
My apologies, I mistook you for someone who was interested in a discussion with a real poster.
Just on a side thought ... I am an example of unfit ... 265 lbs and only 5'8". However as part of my job I have to carry 45 lbs + of equipment over a distance of 5-6 miles and still manage to use the equipment at the end of the journey. I'm not saying that is anything compared with a seasoned, well trained and physically fit soldier but its not bad for someone in their mid forties. Give me two weeks training with a gun and I'd be fine ... give me two weeks training with a sword or pike however and my enemy would soon slice me in two because I'm fit enough to walk a distance and hold a gun steady but not to walk a distance then swing a bladed weapon for any length of time.
Insurgents, terrorists and people who want to shoot up schools can all accomplish their goals with far more ease using firearms than medieval weaponry.
Not saying that to be in the armed forces is easy, but guns do make it far more efficient to become a somewhat effective killer.
Not saying that to be in the armed forces is easy, but guns do make it far more efficient to become a somewhat effective killer.
This. It speaks volumes that pre-modern armies required FAR more training time than modern ones do. Knights started training at the age of five. English longbowmen, who wield a weapon that would hypothetically still be hazardous on the battlefield (arrows tend to make kevlar really sad), took years with evidence from the graves of longbowmen that all the training led to slightly warped skeletal structures from the exaggerated musclestructure which developed from building up the strength to pull a 150 lb draw.
And of course there is the fact that no matter which kind of weapon you are using the end objective was to kill the other guy before they killed you. The whole concept of "honor" being attached to melee weapons is a very Victorian one which emerged as a result of the dueling culture of the time. It says a lot that modern fencing, which developed as a sport from Victorian dueling practices, looks a lot more pretty and elegant than the stuff you find in 15th century longsword manuals. I would also be willing to bet the guy who studied the 15th century manuals would curbstomp the fencer inside of ten seconds flat.
Archery was an honorable way to fight? How is a tactic like "fire as many arrows downrange into troops in tight formation" honorable? Just like every other form of combat (pre or post-gunpowder), it was brutal, nasty, and lethal by design.
As for "personal skill vs personal skill", a gunfight is just as much a skill vs skill situation as anything that happened with swords. Good marksmanship and coolness under fire don't just happen. They're products of training, training, and more training.
The Vulture
Banned
This thread is based on the flawed assumption that there's somehow something honorable or fun about violence. There's just being the guy who lives or being the guy who dies. Shooting at shadowy, far-off moving targets is infinitely easier to live with than looking into someone's eyes as you drive home the knife or crush their throat with your hands.
Nah.
http://www.alsa.mil/library/mttps/jfire.html
13F2PL7, 4.5 years
B Co. 1/505th PIR, 3rd BDE, 82nd ABN DIV
A Trp, 1/91st Cav (ABN), 173rd ABN BDE
AFG DEC 2009 - NOV 2010
AFG SEP 2011 - FEB 2012
"No skill involved" means you have very little concept of how modern warfare works. This thread is very humorous.
Sorry to all that think maybe there are people replying to this thread that think that the modern armed forces are untrained and have it easy. However most of the replies about training are not about soldiers, marines or paratroopers and how skilled and dedicated they are but stem back to a couple of posts on page one of the thread.
And ...
Which is why gunpowder armies are composed of overweight people.
If you look back Aktarian made several good points about the training of the armed forces being more than just target practice which no one disagreed with but Aktarian seemed unable to grasp that to be an effective killer with a firearm (not a soldier) didn't require the highest level of physical fitness whereas to be an effective killer with a melee weapon does.
Let's try divorcing the issue of gun use from combat. No-one, I think, seriously disagrees that being a soldier requires a goodly quantity of physical fitness. So let's imagine a different situation...
Anyone shoot for fun? I don't (don't have the money for it), but a couple of times I've gone down to a shooting range with a friend or family member and spent a pleasant afternoon putting holes of various calibres in targets of various types. The most exercise I got was walking back and forth down the range to check and reset the targets, the actual shooting was not particularly strenuous.
On the other hand, there have been a couple of times when a tree in the backyard became a problem and had to be cut down. Not owning a chainsaw, I used an axe on those occasions. I'm not particularly skilled at such things, so it took me most of an afternoon to get it to the state I wanted it. Not altogether surprisingly, the unaccustomed exercise left me fairly stiff and sore the next day.
My opinion is that swinging the axe for an afternoon was much more physically draining than shooting an SKS for the same length of time, even if we include collecting the brass and cleaning everything afterwards.
Now, that might say more about my physical state these days than the difficulty of the task - I'm happy to admit I'm not in as good condition as when I spent my days (and nights) climbing hills with a radio on my back and a rifle in my hand. But this strikes me as a more accurate example of what Elfwine seems to be talking about than trying to fit everything into combat conditions. We all know that combat is immensely demanding physically, and you want soldiers to be in the best condition they can be before engaging in it.
Anyone shoot for fun? I don't (don't have the money for it), but a couple of times I've gone down to a shooting range with a friend or family member and spent a pleasant afternoon putting holes of various calibres in targets of various types. The most exercise I got was walking back and forth down the range to check and reset the targets, the actual shooting was not particularly strenuous.
On the other hand, there have been a couple of times when a tree in the backyard became a problem and had to be cut down. Not owning a chainsaw, I used an axe on those occasions. I'm not particularly skilled at such things, so it took me most of an afternoon to get it to the state I wanted it. Not altogether surprisingly, the unaccustomed exercise left me fairly stiff and sore the next day.
My opinion is that swinging the axe for an afternoon was much more physically draining than shooting an SKS for the same length of time, even if we include collecting the brass and cleaning everything afterwards.
Now, that might say more about my physical state these days than the difficulty of the task - I'm happy to admit I'm not in as good condition as when I spent my days (and nights) climbing hills with a radio on my back and a rifle in my hand. But this strikes me as a more accurate example of what Elfwine seems to be talking about than trying to fit everything into combat conditions. We all know that combat is immensely demanding physically, and you want soldiers to be in the best condition they can be before engaging in it.
For most of history of mass gunpowder armies, humans didn't have to hump machine guns of any kind. Napoleonic-era troops were often notoriously young and underfed, though athleticism was always prized. But that's athleticism, as in, the ability to march for long periods of time. It has nothing to do with the ability to hold a musket.
I've used a civillian-model Izh rifle when I was a preteen. For fun. And for hunting. With a sword as a preteen however I'd post no threat at all.
These things are not the same and have nothing to do with each other really.
Not to say that all pre-gun fighters were exceptionally strong or anything, however, there's always use for just more bodies in spear formations, and before cheap armour the individual combat load wasn't too big. And in massed armies, you can get away with a lot. There are examples of Napoleonic cavalry troopers as young as 14, for example, and they had to at least pretend to swing a sabre now and then.
A 14 year old man-at-arms in the 15th c. would be as useless as you might think.
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The biggest reasons death in battle and a life of war was seen as more "honorable" comes from three, very real factors which were prevalent in most of the world but especially so in medieval Europe and Sengoku Japan:
1) Your odds of dying from disease, starvation, or accident on the farm were comparable to the odds of death on the battlefield. At least if you're going to die on the battlefield odds are it's going to be faster and more painless than lingering on all day with cholera, typhus, or something worse. That of course is assuming you actually die in the field and don't catch something nasty in camp.
2) The top of the heap, socially speaking, until the Industrial Revolution were men whose power and legitimacy rested on coming from a long line of people who made their living as warlords and soldiers. Therefore it makes perfect sense for that role to be glorified and glamorized. One great example is, in fact, Sengoku Japan. Prior to the establishment of the Tokugawa caste system samurai, because of their associations with death, occupied the lowest rung on the social ladder. It wasn't until the samurai were in charge that it became the glamorous, honorable, top-rung position that it was.
3) Even if you weren't born to the right family a military career was always a great way to move up in the world. If you're a farmer or a second son of a merchant or something and you stick with what you know odds are you're going to be doing that your whole life with no guarantee things are going to improve. If, on the other hand, you chuck all that and go off to join a mercenary company or something there is a chance (assuming you don't die first) that you'll end up wealthier, better connected, and in a higher status position when you get home than you were in when you left.
Industrial warfare, the shifts in power dynamics that took place during the 17th-18th centuries, and improvements in medicine and sanitation had a lot to do with the shift in attitudes. Even then the third option is one that is still a very compelling motivation for many who join the armed forces.
Gunnarz, I could hug you. Failing that, thanks. Yes, that is what I'm talking about, since you could - potentially - hit humans as well as targets with the same amount of physical effort.
LHB: What's your source for samurai being low on the social order?
Not even much of a dabbler on Japanese history, so I'd love to read more.
Flocculencio
Donor
I'd like to thank Aktarian for making this thread a compelling piece of comedy :-D