Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Chemical and biological weapons also have the downside that they POISON THE VERY EARTH THAT YOU ARE TRYING TO TAKE/DEFEND!

Theoretically they might break down through weathering, but there are likely to be residual pockets that will continue to kill people for years or decades after the conflict.

Fire is a horrible way to kill people, but it’s over pretty quickly after the attack.

 Polonius wrote:

OTOH, that article does make a compelling case that maybe they're just surprisingly ineffective.

Well Syria is an example of where they are effective. The Syrian army wasn't keen on a) dying and b) fighting in built up areas as it often led to a). They had Hezbollah guys to use as assault troops, but there were never that many and even they took heavy casualties. Armed well motivated militia, terrorist, insurgent, freedom fighter and whatever else you wish to label them, but essentially locally raised patchily trained light infantry were proving far too hard to shift.
But their morale crumbled when hit with chemical attacks. They would vacate areas and when it was safe Syrian troops could occupy while those light infantry didn't really want to go back. It became a pretty standard urban attack system. And if it came back more widely in fighting today, I think for attacking trenches a mobile combined assault is the way to go not biochem attacks, but potentially for clearing BUAs or suppressing them to allow you to pass (and potentially keep them supressed) chemical attacks could have a place, as long as you didn't care about the civilians in those areas. The BUA also absorbs most of the attack and leaves little to blow back to you.

As a side note they discovered plenty of people for hire and willing idiots in the countries that might have discouraged this use to muddy the waters well enough to ensure nothing overcame western initial reluctance to do much as signatories of the various treaty. I know when I look back in history there is also those people, but is it just my imagination they are more common today?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Flinty wrote:
Chemical and biological weapons also have the downside that they POISON THE VERY EARTH THAT YOU ARE TRYING TO TAKE/DEFEND!

Theoretically they might break down through weathering, but there are likely to be residual pockets that will continue to kill people for years or decades after the conflict.

No, even basic chemical weapons break down relatively quickly. I think Sarin breaks down in contact with moisture. Random containers may trap some, but generally in that type of fighting you aren't to fussed if the locals take a few more casualties from it. They are probably losing more to UXO and mines anyway.

 Easy E wrote:
I think the power of economic warfare, in the short term anyway; can be called into question based on what we are seeing in Russia right now.

No, its just that most people don't understand what the break point is for economic warfare. It is at whatever point the political pressure from the population is enough to convince the leaders to stop. This depends on how much the leaders care to listen to the population and how much the population is willing to tolerate.

Russia has almost normalized going without comforts and luxuries in its culture, and even basic needs being on the edge. The people are just less likely to push back when times get bad. They're going to have to get really really bad.

Russia is also not being fully isolated. There is still limited imports that are allowed, and some countries that are still willing to fully trade. So its not truly economy breaking yet.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I think the power of economic warfare, in the short term anyway; can be called into question based on what we are seeing in Russia right now.

No, its just that most people don't understand what the break point is for economic warfare. It is at whatever point the political pressure from the population is enough to convince the leaders to stop. This depends on how much the leaders care to listen to the population and how much the population is willing to tolerate.

Russia has almost normalized going without comforts and luxuries in its culture, and even basic needs being on the edge. The people are just less likely to push back when times get bad. They're going to have to get really really bad.

Russia is also not being fully isolated. There is still limited imports that are allowed, and some countries that are still willing to fully trade. So its not truly economy breaking yet.

So are you arguing against what I wrote, or supplementing it?

It is pretty clear to me, that economic warfare has not been enough to end the war in Ukraine. Therefore, I question it ability to end or even prevent a future conflict better than conventional military means.

I am saying that you cannot make that statement given how short the war in Ukraine has gone on combined with the fact that Russia has not been completely strangled economically. Its like saying "Gee, I can't drown this guy" when all you've done is spray him in the face with a hose.

It's not evidence that economic warfare doesn't work. Both because not enough time has elapsed and we also haven't gone whole hog.

Russia is being severely weakened by the embargos, but it will take time. Time measured in years, not months.

 catbarf wrote:


Not particularly- I'm with Tyran and Commissar on this one. We've got nastier agents like sarin, anthrax, and VX, but CBRN protection is more widespread and dramatically more effective. It's an impediment to operate in, but it shuts down chemical and biological weapons completely, and it's far cheaper to supply or stockpile CBRN gear than to supply or stockpile chemical weapons.

The elephant in the room in WW II. Everyone had huge chemical weapons stockpiles and protective equipment. No one used it because whatever advantage you got initially would be negated by having to live with the response.

Someone brought up Assad's use of them, and I notice that he still hasn't won his civil war. Weird. He has tanks, jets, artillery and poison gas and what continues to defy him? A bunch of bearded dudes with third-hand AKs.

Not to mention they expected embargos and did setup an extensive savings fund in advance of the war.
The real test is how long they can sustain after that safety net is expired

 Grey Templar wrote:
Russia is being severely weakened by the embargos, but it will take time. Time measured in years, not months.

The US is in far worse shape at the moment. We had runaway inflation and when we tried to rein it in with interest rate hikes, banks began going under. Now we have a liquidity crisis AND inflation.

Which is quite an accomplishment, if you think about it.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Chemical weapons have in the past proven ineffective, but I personal chalk that down to that avenue of warfare being largely untested. Nobody has really committed to saying "screw it, we're all in on chemical warfare".

Please read the essay I linked. Chemical weapons are anathema to modern military doctrine, it's not just about effectiveness. But where effectiveness is concerned, you don't need to be a logistician to recognize that if chemical weapons require ten times the tonnage to get comparable effect to conventional munitions, going all-in on chems is not going to suddenly make them the better option.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Flamethrowers on the other hand are absolutely effective. They are very good for burning out infantry. Just see their use in the Pacific theatre. Yeah, dangerous for the guy carrying it, but very effective against the Japanese foxholes and tunnels. If it was ineffective, we would have stopped using them very fast at that time.

Well, yes, they were effective in 1945. And longbows were plenty effective in 1415, but you probably wouldn't cite Agincourt as compelling evidence for their continued relevance in the modern era.

The 'bunker-busting' role of flamethrowers has been superseded by more effective man-portable explosives and more importantly PGMs. We don't need flamethrowers to clear bunkers, we have JDAMs, M982s, MOABs, Hellfires, C4, SMAWs, and thermobarics. The infantry go in when it's not certain if a structure is occupied by the enemy, or if it may contain civilians, or has tactical or intelligence value. If you just need to clear a cave or tunnel network of all life, a fuel-air explosive does it quicker and more effectively than either a flamethrower or chems, and a SMAW loaded with NE allows infantry with no air support to do it at standoff distance.

Again, we didn't retire flamethrowers or chemical weapons in the last few decades out of some newfound sense of humanitarian morality. We retired them because we have more effective weapons at our disposal that do the job more effectively (in some cases, just as gruesomely), and it's hard to imagine a technical or tactical innovation that would reverse that trend.

PGMs are nice, but in a peer-peer war it has been proven in Ukraine that they are cost prohibitive to supply on the scale needed.

It also presumes the ability of your air assets to loiter around long enough to deliver. That has pretty much been proven to be a difficult proposition by Ukraine as both sides have effectively neutered each other's air power.

Sure, you have to sneak up to a bunker or trench to deliver a flamethrower and could instead just use grenades or some other handheld explosive. That is the same as it was in WW2. And anything more powerful than what we had back then will be more expensive than a flamethrower, which is about as simple a weapon as you could design. Anyone with some pipes, a pump, and some basic knowledge of plumbing could make one.

Ethical concerns were the primary reason we abandoned them, and we have made weapons that can do similar things(but are much much more expensive) so we don't currently feel handicapped, but if things get desperate and we realize that overreliance on expensive stuff has a downside we probably will revert back to cheaper things.

We've already learned that our ability to produce enough artillery shells, a relatively cheap and simple munition, is severely lacking. Our ability to make even more expensive missiles, guided bombs, and other PGMs are even worse in terms of raw numbers.

Its the same reason why super heavy tanks were a bad idea in WW2. Even assuming the Maus and Tiger II worked as intended, you could never have produced them in enough numbers to make a difference. Its why the Sherman was a good idea. Good enough right now and in numbers is better than Perfect in tiny amounts.

Of course we should not totally abandon PGMs and other modern stuff, but more simple systems to fall back on that can be handed out in very large numbers is important too. You'll never be able to give every unit fire support from PGMs in a large scale war, say with a certain land power in asia, so you'll need to consider other tools in addition to those. The stockpiles will simply run out and you'll be using the new production as fast as it gets made.

Heck, Russia is running out of artillery shells. Russia, the country with probably the largest stockpiles of artillery munitions in history, will soon be down to just what can be supplied from their factories. Something which will actually potentially give Ukraine artillery superiority. That alone pretty much proves that more expensive stuff will become extremely scarce in the event of another large scale conflict.

I'd just point out that "Russia has run out/is running out of shells" has been in the media since the war was a few weeks old.

 Overread wrote:
I'd just point out that "Russia has run out/is running out of shells" has been in the media since the war was a few weeks old.

Yes, this is absolute nonsense. Russia has plenty of shells, it's the West that decided that massed tube artillery was a thing of the past. Oops.

As is tradition, the US decided that it wanted to reorganize its armies for the war it would like to fight, not the war it was likely to get. See also: M2 light tanks with a dozen MGs, pentagonal divisions, light divisions, and that awesome programmable grenade launcher that went nowhere. Even now, the US Army has come up with a rifle that is heavier than an M-14 and uses the most expensive ammunition imaginable. Hey, defense contractors need luxury cars, too.

Regarding flamethrowers, they stopped being used because they were highly deadly to the users. No, they didn't explode when hit, but you had to get super close to the target to even use them. That's why flamethrower tanks became such a thing.

If you need to bust a bunker, rocket-propelled munitions are a much better choice. You can also dump other incendiaries on the area. Napalm, for example. Who doesn't love the smell of napalm in the morning?

The point remains: A handful of dudes with 70-year-old rifles in a well-dug hole can tie down a disproportionate amount of enemy resources to get rid of them. Affluent nations keep dreaming that they've found the Magic Dingus to render them moot, and that they'll be able to treat war like a RTS game set on "easy mode," but life doesn't work that way.

 Overread wrote:
I'd just point out that "Russia has run out/is running out of shells" has been in the media since the war was a few weeks old.

Literally running out, no.

But they have run their stockpiles out and are down to begging from China and North Korea and what their factories can do. Best case scenario they can maintain maybe 1/3 of their nominal artillery strength due to these limitations.

If you are producing 10k shells a week but consuming 30k eventually you will be forced down to 10k. That is the situation the Russians are in and they are already having to scale back their artillery usage. They haven't fully run down their stores, but they are mostly used up.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It's not really trivial. NBC gear severely impedes your combat abilities and it is high intensity to maintain as it basically needs to be replaced every day. You can't just camp out in a hazmat suit and get away with just replacing the filters every now and again.

If there was a mass deployment of chemical or biological weaponry in a large trench war scenario both sides would find it difficult to keep their troops in positions for long. I'm sure we have large stockpiles, but if Ukraine has taught us anything its that whatever size stockpile of gear you have it isn't anywhere close to big enough.

NBC gear is also the kind of stuff that really doesn't store for long periods well. Masks and filters are fine, but the suits themselves will stiffen and crack with long term storage so having large stockpiles is troublesome.

While this is indeed true, that's why the world has classified them alongside nukes as 'weapons of mass destruction', and using one might well invite retaliation on more strategic targets with nukes. You use mustard gas on our troops, we start nuking your supply centers.

That's a battle no one will win, so no one RATIONAL wants to start it.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
It's not really trivial. NBC gear severely impedes your combat abilities and it is high intensity to maintain as it basically needs to be replaced every day. You can't just camp out in a hazmat suit and get away with just replacing the filters every now and again.

If there was a mass deployment of chemical or biological weaponry in a large trench war scenario both sides would find it difficult to keep their troops in positions for long. I'm sure we have large stockpiles, but if Ukraine has taught us anything its that whatever size stockpile of gear you have it isn't anywhere close to big enough.

NBC gear is also the kind of stuff that really doesn't store for long periods well. Masks and filters are fine, but the suits themselves will stiffen and crack with long term storage so having large stockpiles is troublesome.

While this is indeed true, that's why the world has classified them alongside nukes as 'weapons of mass destruction', and using one might well invite retaliation on more strategic targets with nukes. You use mustard gas on our troops, we start nuking your supply centers.

That's a battle no one will win, so no one RATIONAL wants to start it.

Several middle Eastern countries used them over the last 30 years, sarin being one of the most common. If that is considered a WMD, then some people owe GWB an apology.

EDIT: fixed a talk to text fail...

On guided munitions, I agree that they can’t be used for every fire mission, but I think they are showing their worth in counterbattery and logistics destruction missions.

Also, arguably, the drones with grenades are guided munitions seeing widespread use. You can’t beat huge amounts of dumb artillery for suppressing an area, but there is a lot of novel stuff being used to kill point targets.

Oh they are very useful. You just can't rely on them to do everything. You must have dumb munitions as well simply to make up numbers, and even then you're still going to fall short of what you would want/need.

If you focus too much on the expensive toys you risk being outnumbered by those who do not.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
If infantry are so good why did the US roll over them in both Iraq wars? Was that an aberration and if those Iraqi infantry had magically been same as US. All the javelins, training etc etc. that the outcome would have been different?

I am just not sure why if they’re so problematic you haven’t seen more investment into ways of killing them. Man in hole in ground shouldn’t be having it that good. Surely a shell or missile is cheaper than a marine?

Hundreds of thousands? So replace 100, 000(small army BTW. Not enough to conquer country much bigger than san marino) with 100,000 missiles. 10,000 million. And that's underestimating price.

Not so cheap is it? And that 10,000 Million ain't holding ground.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
By infantry this being “guys with guns” armed with assault rifles. Surely all the artillery, missiles, drones and planes means a guy with a rifle isn’t really that relevant unless he’s really just a radio operator calling in those weapons. In which case the gun is just there to stop a bunch of civilians hitting him with a big old rock.

Is stuff we see in Call of Duty for example where guys with guns win wars a bit like the cult of the bayonet in the 19th century where it’s wrapped up in romantic notions of war that bears no relation to what’s actually doing the killing? We still give soldiers knives and bayonets as well where again they see a lot more use in popular media far beyond their actual use.

Like what stops them going the way of cavalry, bayonet charges and pike squares? Infantry aren’t vastly more protected than they were in WW1 so why hasn’t the lethality of weapons reached the point where you can’t employ them? Modern weapons are a lot more destructive than in the Great War but this hasn’t led to people dropping infantry and they remain a core part of armies.

Wherever you fight a war, you need to take and hold key points and infrastructure. Nothing to do with Romance, all to do with fact.

Missiles don't do it, tanks don't do it. Call of Duty is a video game. Real war is won by boots on the ground, and making the other guy suffer, and making it a point to visually make an impression by kicking his teeth down his throat.
A "Guy with a rifle" is the most effective thing on a modern battlefield. They don't call them The Queen of Battle for nothing.

There is also the issue that modern governments are very damn bad at defining realistic objectives to achieve. Both Afghanistan and Iraq were such gak shows because the American administrations had no idea what they even wanted to accomplish and much less how to accomplish it.

They became an exercise of throwing expensive missiles at bearded guys with AKs hoping the enemy runs out of guys with AKs, and the enemy didn't run out of guys with AKs and in fact became very good at minimizing the impact of the expensive American missiles.

I'd contend America had a very good idea what they wanted to accomplish.

The problem was that the idea was fantasy that existed far outside the realm of real. Even then, the idea for how to get from A to B was never really there. People seemed to think things would just magically fall into place because guns are black magic or something.

To quote the words once said to a fething moron; "That's a goal, not a plan."

They're not the same thing.

It's easy to digress to strategic discussions, but the core topic centers on infantry, and I think it's clear that it remains the essential arm of the service. No amount of stand-off weaponry can defeat it or compensate for the lack of it.

Keep your political rants out of the conversation please.

My (deleted) cri de coeur notwithstanding, it is interesting to note that after the Six Day War, the Israelis decided that infantry was really only suitable for urban combat, and to economize on personnel (and limit losses), they went with a more "modern" tank/aircraft combination.

This was disastrous, as by 1973 the Arab armies had plentiful ATGMs and SAM systems, which played havoc with tanks and aircraft. The hard lesson was that even in the desert, combined arms - which included lots of infantry - were still necessary.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I'd just point out that "Russia has run out/is running out of shells" has been in the media since the war was a few weeks old.

Literally running out, no.

But they have run their stockpiles out and are down to begging from China and North Korea and what their factories can do. Best case scenario they can maintain maybe 1/3 of their nominal artillery strength due to these limitations.

If you are producing 10k shells a week but consuming 30k eventually you will be forced down to 10k. That is the situation the Russians are in and they are already having to scale back their artillery usage. They haven't fully run down their stores, but they are mostly used up.

This. The Russian military strategy has devolved over the last year into 'Throw human waves and massed artillery from near railheads' because they're incapable of anything else. Their command and control sucks, their artillery targeting is from the 70's, and they burn material at one of the most wasteful rates I've ever seen.

They were firing tens of thousands of shells back when they were besieging Lyschansk. Now? Much, much less than that. Every day they're throwing less, because their stockpiles have been severely depleted after a war that's been running at heavy intensive for an entire -year- now. Their monthly production is nowhere near expenditure (think 5-10%). And whilst not empty, the back of the metaphorical store room is beginning to become visible. In six months, even with slashed usage, they're going to be in trouble.

 Grot 6 wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
By infantry this being “guys with guns” armed with assault rifles. Surely all the artillery, missiles, drones and planes means a guy with a rifle isn’t really that relevant unless he’s really just a radio operator calling in those weapons. In which case the gun is just there to stop a bunch of civilians hitting him with a big old rock.

Is stuff we see in Call of Duty for example where guys with guns win wars a bit like the cult of the bayonet in the 19th century where it’s wrapped up in romantic notions of war that bears no relation to what’s actually doing the killing? We still give soldiers knives and bayonets as well where again they see a lot more use in popular media far beyond their actual use.

Like what stops them going the way of cavalry, bayonet charges and pike squares? Infantry aren’t vastly more protected than they were in WW1 so why hasn’t the lethality of weapons reached the point where you can’t employ them? Modern weapons are a lot more destructive than in the Great War but this hasn’t led to people dropping infantry and they remain a core part of armies.

Wherever you fight a war, you need to take and hold key points and infrastructure. Nothing to do with Romance, all to do with fact.

Missiles don't do it, tanks don't do it. Call of Duty is a video game. Real war is won by boots on the ground, and making the other guy suffer, and making it a point to visually make an impression by kicking his teeth down his throat.
A "Guy with a rifle" is the most effective thing on a modern battlefield. They don't call them The Queen of Battle for nothing.

Plus, if you want to be, uh, “ungentlemanly” about it, Special Forces can perform highly surgical infiltration and assassination missions. Drones can to some degree, but still lack the eyes on kill confirmation. Tanks, and I don’t care how fancy its hat, nor how luxurious its disguise moustache is, certainly can’t.

 Ketara wrote:
This. The Russian military strategy has devolved over the last year into 'Throw human waves and massed artillery from near railheads' because they're incapable of anything else. Their command and control sucks, their artillery targeting is from the 70's, and they burn material at one of the most wasteful rates I've ever seen.

I haven't conducted an exhaustive search of videos or anything, but I find it curious that a war that is so intensely documented on social media hasn't shown much in the way of imagery of these assaults.

When I keep hearing something is the tactical norm but never see photos of piles of Russian corpses piled on concertina wire like it was 1916, I become a bit skeptical.

They were firing tens of thousands of shells back when they were besieging Lyschansk. Now? Much, much less than that. Every day they're throwing less, because their stockpiles have been severely depleted after a war that's been running at heavy intensive for an entire -year- now. Their monthly production is nowhere near expenditure (think 5-10%). And whilst not empty, the back of the metaphorical store room is beginning to become visible. In six months, even with slashed usage, they're going to be in trouble.

Alternative take: They're stockpiling in anticipation of the much-heralded counteroffensive.

They're not totally analogous to ww1 guys going over the top. They're not rushing forward in literal waves. Its just more like they'll send them to sneak forward in groups of 10-20 and after they're cut down the next group goes. We are still not dealing with armies on the scale they were in WW1. It is a blend of modern army size units performing suicidal advances against entrenched positions reminiscent of WW1 grinding assaults.

I'm sure they do some stockpiling, but the lull in Russian artillery volume is definitely due to supply and not any sort of strategic decision to hold back. Given what the Russian's are able to produce monthly and their current expenditure there is little to no room for stockpiling.

edit: NVM

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

I haven't conducted an exhaustive search of videos or anything, but I find it curious that a war that is so intensely documented on social media hasn't shown much in the way of imagery of these assaults.

When I keep hearing something is the tactical norm but never see photos of piles of Russian corpses piled on concertina wire like it was 1916, I become a bit skeptical.

You're not looking in the right places. I've seen some horrific imagery. Bakhmut has for months been showing piles of dead and churned up earth like a WW1 battlefield. Before that, we saw some nasty shots as Russian reservists got thrown in to stabilise the front near Svatove and Russian command traded lives for time. Before that still, Lyschansk and Severodonetsk had horrendous Russian casualty figures and scenes.

But then again, you actually have to follow sources beyond the basic BBC or CNN or whatever to see them. Most of the big news aggregators have typically been two days behind any developments in Ukraine since the start. Daily Kos are by far the most on top of things that I've seen in terms of daily updates/analysis, but there are other sources too. Western media is quite sanitised and only bothers with major stuff these days.

Alternative take: They're stockpiling in anticipation of the much-heralded counteroffensive.

Both can be true. The much vaunted Russian winter assault has largely fizzled out over the last month with gains being confined to another third of the now largely levelled Bakhmut. Wagner's not only burnt most of the available prison conscript resources, but their access to such resources has been cut off with their failure to deliver any significant battlefield returns. And the previous year's emergency Russian mobiks have been largely wasted in various pointless failed drives across Kreminna and Vuhledar and the like.

There will be more conscripts coming, Putin has announced several modifications for this year's callup. But ammunition stocks and personnel are now low, and Ukraine's armoured counterpunch is likely to begin within the next month. So fortification work is proceeding apace, and sufficient reserves need to be maintained to try and meet it. There simply aren't sufficient stores to both advance and defend left in the Russian warehouses anymore, and HIMARS has put massive logistical strain upon Russian ammunition storage and transport. They can't risk what they've got left at current replenishment rates (which are not hard to calculate or unknown).