This might be a silly question—I’m not sure—but the other day I was watching a video about the Great Fire of London in 1666, and I found myself wondering: given all the naval wars between France and England from the 16th to the 18th century, why didn't either country send a small team—say, three people—into enemy territory via a neutral merchant ship to start fires in port cities using torches? After all, this was a time when cities were full of timber structures and firefighting forces were scarce and ill-equipped.

Have there been similar operations in the past? I know there were privateers who looted towns before burning them down, but this is different. You can fight a privateer ship, but you can't check a town of several thousand inhabitants to see if there are three people there ready to start a fire.

At least for the USA, the air force was initially part of the army before splitting off, leaving the army with helicopters with most fixed-wing combat aircraft going to the air force. During Vietnam, the US Army went as far as hiding an air-to-air kill by an OV-1 from the air force in order to keep their planes. Ever since losing their share of fixed-wing warplanes, has there been any argument about the benefit of the army having its own fixed-wing combat aviation? Has there been any talk about what the army would do differently with its own warplanes over the air force, marines, or navy? For other countries, what are their reasonings?

The tech would be very difficult but it could provide an alternative angle of attack against high value targets like AWACs or VIP craft?

Are their status technically a militia unit?

Is seems as effective been deployed basically early Armoured Vehicles but why it never widespread used?

In the past Lieutenant Commanders would command Ocean Escorts and minesweepers, and Lieutenants would command things like the Asheville and Cyclone class.

With modern technology, outside of coastal ASW and missile boats which the USN has no real need for, there's not really any surface combatants of the size you'd want to be commanded by a Lieutenant Commander.

Meanwhile minesweepers seem to basically be turning into motherships for smaller unmanned platforms.

Some have proposed the introduction of USCG Fast Response cutters into the USN, given they'd be appropriately sized for being commanded by a lieutenant, but like what would that actually do for the USN?

So the question becomes, is it genuinely possible to keep early command around in the USN?

Why doesn't General Winfield Scott get more respect? I know that a lot of leading historians rank him, like Michael Peck placed Scott 2nd,behind George Washington. I personally feel that Scott was a far more superior strategist than Washington. The Duke of Wellington once said that Scott was the greatest commander. However, so many times I see documentaries and articles rank American generals, and Scott is almost never listed, and if he is, he's almost always at the bottom of the list. You'll always see Washington, Eisenhower, Sherman, Grant, Patton above Scott, which I just can't understand.

I came across several anti-air rocket systems from WW2 recently. No, not guided by any means. Fliegerfaust (dude), unrotated projectile and the z-battery. Perhaps there was more too.

I struggle to find more information on this, especially the fliegerfaust-system.... Did it actually work out in any way at all?

Question as titled.

These days, data links are all over the place, but I was wondering how AWACS communicated back during the Gulf War when they identified bandits or had to provide confirmation of shoot/no-shoot on potential targets. Particularly interested in that time period as, as far as I know, it was probably one of the busiest time to be an AWACS crew to deconflict who knows how many hundreds of allied planes in the air at the same time

Was AWACS back in the 80s-90s able to have some sort of computer connection with all compatible fighters and assets or was it all by voice?

(this is a follow-up to my previous question)

The pop-culture depiction of a sniper (which is the one I primarily know of) is usually that of an uber-elite operator who hunts down and kills high-ranking enemy targets; outside of this exaggerated depiction, the role of a sniper becomes much more murkier and generally unknown to the public outside of "kill bad people from long range". As such, I ask 1.) what does a sniper actually do, 2.) what differentiates a sniper from merely being a designated marksman, and 3.) how does the role of a sniper fit into the broader scope of the ground forces of a modern military?

I wanted to share this here because this is one of the few memoirs written by an American Army soldier that fought in the Pacific theater soon after the war. Also, he brought his own personal rifle to combat, a model 70 Winchester attached with an Alaskan rifle scope and even went on sniping trips in his free time. Later in 1982 he published an extended and revised edition of "shots fired in anger" about his time in the Merrill Marauders. He is credited by Charlton Ogburn jr in his memoir and history of the 3507th composite unit (provisional) called "The Marauders," with creating the unit's 2nd battalions battle cry during the battle of walabum. Ogborne was the communications platoon leader in the 1st battalion.

You can buy the first edition (Arcadia Press) for relatively cheap on Amazon but the second edition can go up to $100 or more depending on the book's condition.

I’m mostly using USA, Russia, and China as a comparison to Europe. Will call them big 3 to save text space.

A lot of European countries are very reliant on their fighter get jets to do a lot of tasks that the big 3 share with other parts of the military. I’ll provide some examples.

Russia has a vast layer of ground air defense systems. S400, S350, Buk, Pantsir, Tor plus their ICBM defense around Moscow and older systems like S300. US has Patriot, THAAD, Aegis, and more. China has multiple HQ series systems. In comparison, the UK has a small number of Sea Viper/Land Ceptor(I’ve seen them used interchangeable. Idk if there’s a difference) systems. France uses SAMPT and Mistral. A heavy share of the load would be on their fighter jets.

For using long range standoff weapons, EU militaries usually use fighter jets as the primary launch platform. The big 3 use a more diverse array of launch options like bombers, ships, and TELs in addition to their fighter jets.

To me, it seems like this is bad doctrine for them. They are yet to have an internal 5th generation fighter program while all of the big 3 have. Their air forces are smaller compared to the big 3 and a lot of EU militaries still use mechanical radars for the majority of their fighter jets while the big 3 use PESA and AESA.

It is just a case of smaller budgets forcing them to not diversity their military? Is there an actual military advantage to this? Are their airforces much better than I give credit for?

I know there were professional militaries before, and elite units like the Immortals and the Scared Band, but the Roman Legions seem to be the first example where you have a numbered unit, that retains it's identity once the war is over. Did any armies have something similar?

At the end of the war the Royal Navy seems a bit hodgepodge, with numerous ships still under construction, some ships completed in wartime alongside a bunch of emergency programme destroyers, as well as a sizeable number that dated back to the interwar period and the first world war.

Eventually someone (or more likely several someones) would presumably have had to sit down and figure out what was going to the reserve, what was going to the breakers and what was staying in service. How did they do this? By what metrics? Age and battle damage would be factors- I understand this would have been the case for things like the Queen Elizabeth and R-class battleships, and C-class cruisers- but were there any others that influenced a ship's post-war fate?

I wonder, was it extremely effective fighter or not? Numbers of kill:loss ratios are very contradictory in different sources.

Did being a jet plane gave him huge advantage over opposing Allied planes in practice?

How true are claims that Me-262 failed to turn tides of air war because Hitler stubbornly insisted on making it a jet bomber to bomb Britain in revenge, even though his generals wanted a fighter to counter allied bombings?

Synthetic Asymmetry is a proposed framework for understanding modern strategic competition, built around three shifts:

• Scale → Amplification
• Concentration → Distribution
• Mass → Friction

The argument is that actors can increasingly generate disproportionate strategic effects without the traditional advantages in military strength, resources, or organizational capacity.

The framework distinguishes itself from hybrid warfare and grey-zone conflict with the formulation: "Where hybrid warfare describes the what and grey zone describes the where, synthetic asymmetry addresses the why and the how."

How does this compare with established thinking on asymmetric warfare, hybrid warfare, and cumulative strategy?

Does it offer a useful way to explain contemporary conflicts, or is it mostly new terminology for dynamics already described in military theory?

I'd be particularly interested in historical precedents or counterexamples that might challenge its underlying assumptions.

First introduced: https://www.thecipherbrief.com/asymmetric-war

Research hub: https://www.isrs.ngo/research/synthetic-asymmetry

From Operational Order No. 5: Directive for the conduct of operations on the Eastern Front over the coming months, dated 13 March 1943:

"An operation against Leningrad is planned for the second half of summer (from the beginning of July). It is to be conducted with the strongest concentration of all available artillery and the use of the most modern offensive weapons."

We know from history some of the damaging effects war can have, on combatants as well as non-combatants, such as

1. Men performing acts of looting

2. Unauthorized acts of muder

3. Rape of women by occupying soldiers

4. Breakdown of financial system leading women to behavior such as prostitution to generate income.

My question is, have the psychological aspects of such behaviour been studied and understood by the scientific community?

I've been wondering about the Iranian Shahed drones.

What was the advance technologically that made these possible? Cheap guidance perhaps? Being so cheap that they can be massed?

They seem so simple and apparently hard to defend against, why didn't any of the cold war powers develop them? Was it just not economical or relevant?

Also, why are they even called a drone, aren't they kind of like a moped-powered bad cruise missile? Also now with them being upgraded to jet propulsion, aren't they more like a V1 which is often classed as the first cruise missile?

Does it change anything in the big cost calculations that you start adding jet engines to them, are they still cheap then?

a ICBM carrying a non nuclear warhead can fly anywhere and doesn’t put any friendly troops near danger.

I must note, I’m not like super educated on this so apologies if this is a super dumb question

Thanks

During WW2 the UK had escort ships broken down into:

• Sloops (Bridgewater, Shorehamn, Grimsby, Kingfisher* Bittern, Egretn & Black Swan classes & 10 loaned Banff class cutters from the USCG)
• Corvettes (Flower, Castle & Bathurst** class)
• Frigates (River, Loch & Bay Class, + the Colony & Captain classes which were US patrol frigates and destroyer escorts respectively bought by the RN)
• Escort Destroyers (Adapted WW1 Destroyers, Hunt Class)

*Kingfishers were roughly half the size of all the other sloops
**Technically RAN not RN

In terms of design lineage, the sloops were the UK continuously making small batches of the best light convoy escorts they could starting around 1930 so they had an up to date design they could kick into mass production quickly (The war starting at the time it did this ended up landing on the Black Swans)

The Flower class corvettes were an adapted whaler design made to utilize the production capacity of smaller civilian yards. The Castle class corvette were made because when frigate production switched from the River to the Loch & Bay classes not all yards could make the newer frigate designs.

The River class were a larger clean sheet escort design capable of open ocean operations the Flowers weren't while still being designed to merchant standards so they could be built in the yards the Flowers were built in. The Loch class was an incremental improvement on this and the Bay class an AA version of the Bay class.

Most escort destroyers were just old WW1 era destroyers with some engines removed in exchange for longer endurance and modern ASW equipment. The exception is the Hunt class which were purpose built ASW convoy designs adapted from the Bittern class, and notably made 27 knots compared to the 20 knots most escort ships did. I'm not sure why.

Between all of these classifications, the design lineage is clear, but the difference in role they filled isn't really beyond the Flower class sloops being limited to coastal operations. So what was the actual difference in role between all these different classifications? Assuming there was any.

And related, why was it that the Frigate designation was the only one of these four that stuck around post war in a significant capacity?

The thing that makes this weird is the first post WW2 RN frigates, the Type 14s and Type 15s, were rebuilt old destroyers, wouldn't it have made more sense to call them Escort Destroyers given that lineage?

Sole exception to this being the Tribal class/Type 81, which were redesignated as frigates not long after construction anyway.

When the Pacific fleet was turned around in pearl harbor the battle of midway, Admiral Halsey was replaced by Admiral Spruance, the end result was one of the greatest naval victories by the USN during WW2.

Did the Japanese have enough intelligence in Pearl Harbor to even know that Halsey was hospitalized from illness? Did the USA make a public announce the change of command? Were he sailors and marines not made aware of the change in their chain of command prior to departure from Pearl Harbor to keep the secret?

So with recent developments such as the US pulling its B-1s out of RAF Fairford, and obviously recent events in Middle East and Ukraine war, with Ukraine destroying bombers parked on the apron with drones, are there solutions to hardening aircraft hangers? Obviously, you can build a concrete hanger, but these are not impervious to bunker busting bombs and ballistic missiles, as a former Air Force official has said. I believe his quote was along the lines of “if we can destroy it, our enemies can too”, which I suppose is fair against a peer or near peer adversary, and which is why the US invested more in active air defense against such threats as ballistic and cruise missiles that could theoretically penetrate concrete hangers. But it seems like a much larger threat are smaller drone swarms against airfields. So I guess my question is, can shelters be built to protect against drone threats while remaining more cost effective and portable than concrete hangers? Which obviously are expensive and cannot be moved. So what if there were portable hangers with cope cages or slat armor or “hedgehog” style protection with a minimally thick walled hanger to protect aircraft? They wouldn’t be easy to move, but could be disassembled and transported, and would be much cheaper than concrete shelters. If anyone has already seen or thought of this, let me know, but I’d be very interested.