Ever thought about the progress of military technology in the last 67 years?

[judasmachine]

Capturing that UFO at Roswell has helped quite a bit indeed.

I kid I kid... but ya never know.

 

[AndrewR]

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: AndrewR
It's quite amazing when you take a step back and think about it. Just a few off the top of my head in no particular order:

1.) Body armor. You can get shot with a 7.62mm bullet in the chest and bounce back up and kill the guy who shot you. Ditto for the helmets, which weigh less and are MUCH more comfortable than those steel pots. You can't cook in them though!

2.) Aircraft. Biplanes were still in service in nearly every air force at the start of the war, and now we have supercruising, stealth fighter-bombers with extraordinary radar and the ability to drop a 250lb bomb on a pinpoint target. Only a select few fighters back then used radar, and the land-based radar was exceptionally crude compared to what they can do today. Boeing B29 bombers carried computer controlled machine guns that would calculate trajectory and track enemy aircraft on their own.

3.) Armored vehicles. Thin-skinned tanks that could only fire from a halt have progressed to 60+ mph beasts that can withstand multiple hits and kill anything within several kilometers while moving over rough terrain, day or night.

4.) Missiles. Didn't even exist at the start of the war, and they only saw very limited use by the end (not talking ballistic). Germans had a rudimentary air-to-air and an anti-ship missile that were barely used. Now, we have AAMs that can kill at incredible distances and guide themselves to target. Or, there are infrared guided ones that can lock on at insane distances and outmanuever anything that flies. Sensor technology is just unbelieveable.

5.) Naval ships. Today's US carriers displace over FIVE TIMES what some of the "big tops" did in WWII (USS Intrepid, for instance). Submarines are now quieter than a mouse fart, and they can launch all manner of different weapons or even deploy special operations forces without even surfacing.

6.) Helicopters. Didn't exist at the start, saw VERY limited use, and are now indispensable and everywhere. Heck, now we have tiltrotors!

And the list goes on. Quite incredible, actually.

1. Body Armor has been around for centuries and is nothing new. During WWI soldiers would stick iron plates under their shirts to protect them from flying metal. When WWII came around Pilots were known to sew metal plates on to their clothing.
2. Stealth Technology was around in during World War II. The German Luftwaffe had the Horton HO-229 flying wing that was invisible to radar. When Lockheed Engineers in the 1980's decided to design a stealth bomber the fist thing they did was visit the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to get their inspiration.
   http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.asp?aircraft_id=105
   An Airborne HO-229
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_aircraft
   
3. Both German and Russian Tanks could take dozens of hits and keep going. There are many reports of US soldiers shooting 30 bazooka rounds at a Tiger Panzer with no effect. Many US Sherman tanks could not destroy a Tiger, for them it was like trying to shoot through a brick wall using a BB gun. When Russians and Germans faced against each other (Tigers or King Tigers) they would often get caught rammng in to oneanother becase their guns had little effect on the opponents armour. Sadly the US tanks were think skinned and were easily destroid when hit. They advantage US tanks had over axis armour was speed and numbers.
   
4. Missiles did exist during WWII and dated back to the 1920's, the only problem was the Allies did not have them.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket
   
   Some American aircraft (p38, p51, and others) were (or could be) equiped with air to air missiles and some German fighters had wire guided missiles that were guided by the pilot or co-pilot.
   
5. The Japaneese Navy had some ships that easly rival the size of many of todays warships. (iI cant think of the name of the Giant Japaneese Battleship that scared our navy but we manged to sink anyways)
   
   
6. The first Heliocopter made its first untethered flight on May 13, 1940. Before May 13, other flighs had been attempted but the pilot and his 'chopper were tied to the ground.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Sikorsky
   

[/end of thread]

1) Body armor for military purposes was essentially abandoned with the advent of the firearm. There's a nice piece of Napoleon-era body armor on display in Salon, France, which has a 2-3 inch hole ripped into the upper chest from a firearm. I can only imagine what happened to the poor sap that was wearing it, and it's no wonder armor was not worn very often in the face of firearms. Subsequently, body armor was worn to protect against SHRAPNEL (that's what you call "flying metal fragments" incidentally) since they are generally not precisely formed and are somewhat easy to stop. Up through recent body armor developments with ballistic plates, all military body armor was designed to stop shrapnel, whether from artillery (surface-surface and surface-air) or grenades or air-delivered munitions. The Kevlar vests worn by the military up until OIF/OEF did only that but could also probably stop pistol rounds, just like the body armor worn by law enforcement. The new ballistic plates can stop rifle rounds traveling at tremendous velocities with significant armor piercing potential. Comparing the protection of THAT armor to iron plates sewn into jackets to stop pieces of shrapnel is hardly pertinent.

2) Oh, so stealth was widely known and commonly used since WWII? That must have been why the F-117 was such a revolutionary aircraft when it appeared in the skies over Baghdad in the first Gulf War. :roll: Plus, given the fact that pieces of metal tinfoil dropped from a plane could devastate WWII radar systems, it's hardly a miracle that an aircraft could defeat detection, though I'm not sure where you got that since the HO-229 was only a prototype system (and I love that you linked a computer-generated picture of it "flying"!). Yes, the Germans had the first flying wing design, but there are no indications that they did so for reasons of stealth. When the US designed the B-2, they went back to the German work plus the follow-on work that the US did after the war, but it was for the construction techniques and lessons learned about the flying wing, not the stealth characteristics!

Incidentally, I love reading Wiki when the people who wrote it obviously have no real idea about modern military technology, tactics, or procedures, yet think they do. It's quite funny!

3) Obviously some tanks in WWII had decent armor, but their ability to withstand direct hits from inferior tank guns (the majority of the Shermans) or small caliber antitank weapons (the bazooka) doesn't mean much at all. The Tiger was a formidable weapon in its day, when it ran reliably, which it didn't, but it was vulnerable to tanks of the era as the burning hulks attested to on both the eastern and western fronts. Regardless, one M1A2, properly supported with spare parts, fuel and ammunition, could have annihilated divisions of enemy armor from any of the combatants, though the crew members ears would probably be bleeding from the concussion of multiple direct hits. You simply have no grasp of the power of the Abrams (or the Challenger) if you think that WWII tanks have any relation to it.

4) I mentioned WWII missiles, didn't I? They weren't exactly sophisticated (point this direction, fire, run out of fuel and fall -- in the case of the V1) nor were they particularly effective for the most part. By the end of its life, the V1 was routinely shot down with no effect. The V2 was amazing for its time but was only an IRBM with very crude targeting and a limited warhead. The same basic system, albeit with a larger warhead and range, exists today -- it's called the SCUD. Compare that to a modern ICBM which can fly over the entire globe and deliver up to 10 independently targetable warheads each with a Circular Error Probable that is simply amazing. Crack a book, instead of Wiki, and read up about modern missile technology in air-to-air, surface-to-air (did they have those in WWII?), and air-to-surface weapons and then get back to me. Quite frankly, you're clueless.

5) You're thinking about the Yamato, which was sunk attempting to attack the US invasion fleet off of Okinawa in 1945. Guess what? The WWI technology of the super battleship was destroyed with the WWII technology of naval aviation -- quite easily, in fact. Ditto for the Bismarck, which was doomed by a single torpedo to the rudder. The range of Naval firepower (non-aviation) was limited to under 20 miles, yet modern warships can touch far greater distances with cruise missiles. What would have happened if the Yamato had an AEGIS-equipped ship next to it? All those attackers would have been destroyed, and the Yamato would have happily wreaked havoc in the invasion fleet (ok, so the AEGIS ship would have run out of missiles before it destroyed all the planes -- that's immaterial). Again, you're clueless about modern naval warships. Read a book.

6) The Germans used helicopters for CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue) on the eastern front during WWII, which is what I referenced. Considering that there are now helicopters that can carry immense loads long distances, there's hardly a comparison. The Apaches in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq do some amazing work and have saved a lot of men on the ground. They have thermal sights, laser and/or radar guided missiles, and a eyesight-aimed 30mm cannon that'll chew up people on the ground (just saw an awesome video of an IED-emplacement crew being cut to pieces).

Thread PWNED.

Ok, teenager, back away from Wikipedia, read some history books and some modern military books, and then get back to me with some debate if you want to try. Call me unimpressed. Damn it, responding to this crap took away from my CoD2 time tonight. :|

 

[AndrewR]

Originally posted by: judasmachine
Capturing that UFO at Roswell has helped quite a bit indeed.

I kid I kid... but ya never know.

Hey, there's supposedly an alien research facility (according to one website) under some of the hangars near where I work in Area B of Wright-Patterson AFB. Those hangars are where they do the aircraft refurbishment for the USAF Museum, next door. At least, that's the cover story. *wink, wink*

Oh, and that's where all the old aircraft go, and there's parts outside, and there aren't hundreds of people working underground, and...

 

[AndrewR]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
All I see is a giant sinkhole. Our most recent annual military budget was roughly $445 billion.

NASA receives roughly $16 billion per year. If NASA even received one-quarter of the budget consideration our military does, we would easily have a human presence on Mars (and the wealth of scientific knowledge that would bring).

Worse still is the fact that all we can seem to do with our mighty military is start losing conflicts in countries we shouldn't be in. Or sink billions more into shoddy weapons systems and antiquated technology that only a pork-barrel government could procure. Opening up military contracts to more than just a select group of contractors would easily earn the American people more for their defense dollar.

That "sinkhole" is protection your ungrateful butt on a daily basis. Plus, if you want to rail against wasteful spending, take a look at how much the government spends on interest on the national debt, Medicare/Medicaid, and Social Security. All combined, those absolutely dwarf the defense budget. The defense budget as a percentage of GNP is actually historically lower than several times in our history, including the '80s.

Now, I won't argue about the wastefulness of military contracting. That system is broken and needs to be fixed, but it won't be for a variety of reasons. Don't get me started on that one!

 

[K1052]

The Germans were just getting the hang of lobbing V1s and V2s with small warheads onto London and now we can toss a 300kt nuclear warhead into an area the size of a football field halfway around the world in less time than it takes to drink your coffee from Starbucks.

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: AndrewR
5) You're thinking about the Yamato, which was sunk attempting to attack the US invasion fleet off of Okinawa in 1945. Guess what? The WWI technology of the super battleship was destroyed with the WWII technology of naval aviation -- quite easily, in fact. Ditto for the Bismarck, which was doomed by a single torpedo to the rudder. The range of Naval firepower (non-aviation) was limited to under 20 miles, yet modern warships can touch far greater distances with cruise missiles. What would have happened if the Yamato had an AEGIS-equipped ship next to it? All those attackers would have been destroyed, and the Yamato would have happily wreaked havoc in the invasion fleet (ok, so the AEGIS ship would have run out of missiles before it destroyed all the planes -- that's immaterial). Again, you're clueless about modern naval warships. Read a book.

The Bismark is now thought to have been scuttled, as her surviving crew claimed. The British pounded the crap out of it knocking out most of the command and fire control functions but she was too well designed and armored to sink so easily. The Brits were also engaging at low ranges to so the flat trajectory of the shells ended up doing little damage to the hull.

One of the reasons the Iowas were kept in service for so long is that since the shift to missiles from naval gunnery ship construction incorperates far less armor than the WWII era stuff. The thick ballistic steel of the Iowas armor belts was thoughtto be able to resist modern anti-ship missiles far better than anything afloat. That and the fact that they could keep up with a fast modern carrier group (not to shabby for mid 40's engineering).

 

[LordMorpheus]

Originally posted by: cubby1223

Originally posted by: AndrewR

Originally posted by: Scouzer
i'd say the difference between 1910 and 1945 (Counting the first nuke here) was more consequential than 1945 to 2006.

When you consider the progress in electronic warfare and space systems, you're talking about a lot of things that just didn't exist. Nukes are impressive, of course, but the delivery systems now (and the explosive force relative to the first ones) are amazingly better. Dropping from a bomber to launching from a submerged submarine?

But if you consider from 1900 fighting with calvary on horseback, to 1945 with tanks, fighter planes, machine guns, rockets, nukes, I think I'd have to agree with the original comment.

I agree. Our tech is way more advanced, but it seems that the way a war is fought today is similiar to the way the fighting went towards the end of WWII, but WWII bears almost no tactical resemblence to WWI.

 

[lyssword]

Originally posted by: judasmachine
Capturing that UFO at Roswell has helped quite a bit indeed.

I kid I kid... but ya never know.

Yup, definetly aliens.. It was the aliens who enabled us to talk and communicate, write, write computer programs, use math, they also taught us how to manufacture stuff (yep Henry Ford was in on it, don't you know? ), they also invented telephone (internet evolved using telephone lines), keyboards, mice, glass-tube monitors, Liquid Crystal Displays, video cards, wires, chemistry, and of course, electricity, I mean it has to be the aliens, right?

 

[ballmode]

after WW3, we will be cavemen

 

[Dumac]

The power of our nuclear arms has grown exponentially.

I saw an image that really put the growth into perspective. It was in a very weird book..i'll try to remember the novel/author

 

[CrackRabbit]

Originally posted by: ballmode
after WW3, we will be cavemen

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Albert Einstein

 

[foghorn67]

Originally posted by: ballmode
after WW3, we will be cavemen

sweet. Club woman in the head, drag back to cave.
kidding, kidding.