Comments on: Artillery Speed Shifter

By: Slovenian Guest

Slovenian Guest — Sat, 20 Jul 2013 21:00:09 +0000

Hold your horses, matey, calling this agitated propaganda goes a tad too far.

It has a fair share of problems in contrast, but it’s interesting never the less.

The author’s concept of “technowar” is spot on and even current.

How the only thing that counts is economics, ergo it’s theoretically impossible for an un-technical peasant country to beat the United States. McNamara’s production model of running the war like a Ford motor company, how we can compare search and destroy operations to an assembly line, and so on.

The ignorance of country and language, the self-serving behavior of the officer corps in sacrificing troops for their own careers, the corruption, waste, and all the rest…

And the book you mentioned… covers similar things! How the military valued management skills over leadership, which was lacking at all levels.

And if I had to choose, definitely ignorant; you can only get so far by reading Wikipedia and watching YouTube videos. Maybe further by reading this site, I certainly hope so.

By: Dan Kurt

Dan Kurt — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 20:32:25 +0000

If you are truly a Slovenian you must be young enough to not have lived under Communism. Usually those who lived under Communism are inured against Statist Propaganda. The film is pure agitprop. Learning the truth about Viet Nam from it is akin to learning about the Free Market from the films of Michael Moore.

In the event you are merely ignorant rather than malicious, read Richard A. Gabriel and Paul Savage, Crisis in Command: Mismanagement in the Army, ISBN-10: 0809001403.

By: Slovenian Guest

Slovenian Guest — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 19:09:04 +0000

No, it was pretty much a top-down loss, Vietnam. Watch Reasons for Failure — Why the U.S. Lost.

By: Dan kurt

Dan kurt — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 14:46:20 +0000

Heard from a former special forces officer during the 1970s.

Problem with 105s (Fire Bases) was green officers who more often than not “ran by the book” fire requests. Namely, first few rounds would be SMOKE for ranging before firing for effect. Delay caused loss of targets as the enemy dispersed. Request for fire mission would have been much more effective if educated guess by fire base as to aiming point request had been permitted with massed salvos (multiple tubes engaged) with adjustments in aim for subsequent salvos. Green officers feared censure if they deviated from standard procedure.

This is another reason the US lost. It sure hurt morale to see opportunity lost again and again.