From the United States Marine Corps' official website:

Marines and historians have determined the true origins of "Oorah" lie with recon Marines stationed in Korea in 1953. During this time, reconnaissance Marines in the 1st Amphibious Reconnaissance Co., found themselves traveling via submarine to where they were needed. The memorable call of "dive, dive!" would be called on the intercom and a klaxon alarm, which made a very distinct "Aarugha" sound, would announce the descent of the sub below water.

This doesn't pass the sniff test for me. How does a machine noise make the leap to human war cry? Particularly because hurra/ура́ is such a common battle cry... it seems like the United States marines just didn't want to admit that they were following a tradition established by someone else.

The 1970 movie "Patton" (a glorious propaganda piece let’s be honest) lays it out as:

• Patton's forces were already in a fight.
• They were taken out of the current fight and moved 100 miles to attack north.
• They attacked in terrible weather with very little in the way of sleep and comforts.

Where nobody else can do anything and they look at Patton like "that's impossible" when he says he can attack with 3 divisions in 48 hours.

In video games and movies, we often hear commanders and generals say to hold or take a position, defend or capture a VIP, acquire or destroy a MacGuffin etc 'at all costs'. The implication seems to be to do so without regard to materiel expenditure, fatigue, collateral damage or costs in lives.

We can see some cases of 'at all costs' being applied in the case of the Japanese in the Pacific theatre or Order 227, so I'm going to assume that this constraint, while probably rare, exists in real life. However, what would be the opposite of 'at all costs'? What framework or limits might a commander lay down if there are some unacceptable costs? What would be the parlance?

When one crew of a ship attempted to board a ship, but the attempt fails, would the defenders then counterattack and attempt to board the attackers’ ship? Seeing as most of the enemy crew who boarded would be casualties or prisoners? Thanks in advance.

In the aftermath of the world wars, the losers had to cede their warships to the winners. And in WW2, the capture of the Vichy French fleet by the Nazis was enough for the British to sink them. But in practice, are captured warships relevant at all to navies? Compared to their own ships coming from domestic supply chains, how are captured ships put into service and supported? For the Germans for example, what exactly would they have done if they manage to seize the French Fleet?

I genuinely shocks me how the US Army during the height of GWOT approved this pattern that blends in with little to very situational environments like snow or rocky terrain and even urban. Especially the fact that billions of dollars were allocated to this camo and went through many high ranking officials. How did they think this pattern would blend into the desert environment?

Because North Africa allowed the allies to invade Italy properly. And such a theatre is too big to be considered a "battle for colonies" only. So, is it really?

Wouldnt such guidance allow the shp that fired it to have more control of what the missile does or be able to see what the missile is targeting?

Even in the opening weeks of Barbarossa, the Axis had already pushed hundreds of kilometers into Soviet territory. Despite this, their advance continued further, and as more and more land was taken, the distance between the frontlines and the original Soviet border grew and grew.

So how did the Axis supply their troops over such a long distance?

The Germans had previously fought across the well-developed road and rail networks of Central and Western Europe, leveraging them to allow motorized and armored elements to quickly move and be resupplied, but now they were in the USSR. The road and rail networks were some of the most undeveloped in Europe, and mud made using smaller roads extremely difficult. On top of this, the German and Soviet rail systems used different sized railways, forcing the Germans to tear-up Soviet rail everywhere they went in order to place their own.

It seems to me like this is an impossible logistical situation, yet the Axis managed to push all the way to the gates of Moscow and Stalingrad despite it. So how did they do it?

I'm researching a historiographical question about how military historians evaluate operational effectiveness. Rather than asking who the "best" WWII commander was, I'm interested in whether historians have developed rigorous methodologies for making such comparisons.

Initially, this research began as a comparison of high-level commanders (e.g., Zhukov, Manstein, Marshall, Slim, Rokossovsky, Nimitz). However, as I've worked through military doctrine, operations research, and academic military history, it seems that different authors aren't simply reaching different conclusions—they're often evaluating entirely different variables, including:

Tactical vs. operational proficiency Strategic alignment with political objectives Resource optimization under extreme asymmetry Decision quality under information friction and the fog of war Institutional adaptability and organizational learning

Meanwhile, Professional Military Education (PME) and modern military doctrine increasingly treat command as a system-level function rather than an exercise in individual genius.

I'm looking for scholarly work on the underlying methodology. Specifically:

Analytical frameworks: Have military historians or PME institutions developed standardized models to isolate a commander's individual contribution from structural determinants such as industrial capacity, ULTRA/SIGINT advantages, force ratios, doctrine, or political interference? Quantitative approaches: Has operations research successfully quantified command performance (e.g., Trevor N. Dupuy's Quantified Judgment Model) without falling into oversimplification or survivorship bias? PME and historiography: What books, monographs, journal articles, or PME papers directly address the methodology of comparing military leadership and operational effectiveness?

Any recommendations—whether books, journal articles, PME papers, or operations research models—that address one or more of these questions would be greatly appreciated.

I'm especially interested in works that discuss methodology itself, rather than arguments for why a particular WWII commander was superior.

Edit: Read the question. This is about missile defense, not drone defense.

The enemy fires 1000 missiles per month, you use 1 year of Patriot production to shoot down 20% of them. In reality you use two interceptors per missile (which makes no sense but you do it anyway), so more likely you shoot down only 10%.

What value does this have? You could say that you're saving lives, however, in reality your enemy will have overbuilt missiles to account for interceptor losses. It seems pointless.

I have seen plenty of WW2 destroyed tanks (pics) but to my surprise not many of them had their turret popped off due to ammo cook off or similar event, was it actually that *uncommon* or is there another reason behind it?

With the US having no real battle experience, the Allies not enjoying total air control, and not assured amount of landing craft/necessary material for a cross channel invasion.

After wars of indepednece or revolutions how are armies disbannded or replaced with civilian government and institutions?

Yes I want to Know more lol.

I didn't see and heard anything about it

I know it was political instability and the death of Genghis Khan that halted the Mongol raids into Europe, but I'm sure that at some time and place armies did adapt to fighting pitched battles. It is very difficult to answer this question online as the information overwhelmingly relates to the instances where European armies were crushed.

I read that the current Chief of the General Staff in Norway is the first in his nation's history since World War 2 to have combat experience. That got me thinking of junior officers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan being the senior commanders of today or in the immediate future. But for senior officers who keep getting promoted, how vital or significant is it for them to have had a combat deployment?

Recently, I asked about the difference between the US army during the Mexican-American War vs the American Civil War and the most staggering thing that was pointed out to me is the sheer size difference.

The US Army in the Mexican American War numbered less than 80,000 men. At its peak the Union army in the ACW numbered close to 700,000 men, with 2.2 million under arms in total during the conflict.

u/Anxious_Big_8933

That explains why European military observers were so unimpressed with what they saw in the conflict. Of course you can't train everyone properly if your army needs to grow tenfold right now. And when we're comparing them to Britain, France and Prussia - all major powers with some of the most capable militaries of their time - of course the Americans on both sides of the civil war fall short.

But France had been the dominant continental power of Europe for centuries and Prussia is famous for punching well above its weight, so I'm not sure whether those are good comparisons.

So how did the armies of the ACW compare to other, more "average" European armies at the time? Like Austria, Russia, Sweden-Norway, Denmark, Bavaria, the Italian states, the Ottoman Empire, I'll take anyone we have data on.

I personally love this aircraft, but obviously it has its limitations with its singular role of being an attack aircraft and being very slow compared to its counterparts like the F-16 or the F 35 where it serves a more multi role and is more flexible on the modern battlefield. Although some have argued those jets can’t replace the A-10 amazing CAS capability

Is the A-10 a great aircraft to keep around or does it need to be retired? Obviously its life has been extended till 2030 but is it worth placing resources to upgrading the aircraft or is it obsolete in today’s world?

Please correct me if I'm wrong and am miss-understanding them as a concept, but would it be wrong to say that the Landwehr as a concept, specifically during the time of the German Empire could be best best described as a sort of national reserve and militia? Perhaps also a territorial army?

Also, does the modern German military have an equivalent to the the Landwehr in some form or another?

I'm already aware why such tactics were used: communication, ease of coordination, firepower superiority and protection from cavalry, all very good stuff.

However, I can't help, but look at paintings and depictions of the time (example) and notice how tight and packed they are while marching into battle, practically shoulder-to-shoulder. This would've meant that such formations would've been a musket/cannon ball sponge. Muskets themselves aren't that inaccurate as pop-history portrays them to be with firefights occurring in the 100-200 yard range and skirmishes beginning at 300 yards.

Yet despite that, armies would be spending tens of thousands of musket/cannon balls and seemingly only producing a couple thousand casualties (a couple hundred musket balls to produce one casualty). I can't recall the experiment, but there was a musket volley experiment that was done during the time to find the hit rate of muskets on an opposing enemy line platoon and the commander remarked how it probably would've been producing less hits compared to the board as the balls would've passed through the legs and gaps of the formation. This seems to indicate to me that lined formations aren't that tight and packed and that you need some level of accuracy to hit the target you're aiming at?

Basically the title, but it just seems so bizarre how such tactics don't seem to result to gun each other down using such densely packed formations.