Maybe she’ll disappear in the forest!
Maybe she’ll disappear in the forest![/quote]
Like this guy! http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/02/25/lovestruck-0225.html
That’s entirely incorrect. The introduction of cannons and mortars from 1320 onwards didn’t make castles redundant overnight. If anything, it enhanced their defensive value. In 1453 it took twelve days to batter a hole in a wall at Constantinople. (Not Instanbul. Even old New York was once New Amsterdam.)
Tunnelling and petards helped but the advantages of gunpowder lay with the defenders. All the architectural ploys of merlon and embrasure, murder-hole and portcullis, and concentric curtain walls, worked just as well for firearms as they did for hand-propelled missles. Certainly not all castles were suitable for mounting cannon so they set about retrofitting and building ones that could.
Charles VIII of France contributed wheeled artillery of lighter weight and higher muzzle velocity, with barrels that could depress and elevate, and that fired iron cannonballs. The new mobility plus higher accuracy lead to an ability to concentrate fire on just one spot on the curtain wall which would eventually disintegrate the masonry.
Castle builders responded by thickening the walls of existing fortifications. That soon reached the limits of practicability. They also tried to thicken and curve the merlons on the battlements as well as curving the stonework on towers and walls. Those all turned out to be temporary measures. Eventually, a new breed of expert engineers and architects used Renaissance science and theoretical mathmetics to design effective castles and forts.
In 1538 Henry the VIII (who got married to the widow next door - She’s been married seven times before) instigated the ‘forts-fleet-field army’ strategy of defending Britain’s shores from foreign invaders. Deal Castle being an exceptional representation of the period. It didn’t fall until 1648 during the English Civil War. The Royalists held out against the Parliamentarians for two months, but surrendered after the total defeat of a seaborne relief force.
It was only during the mid to late 1600’s with Vauban’s technical mastery that the switchover from castles (that were still recognizable as such) to fortresses truly began. Around 150 fortified towns and lesser fortresses owe their defenses to him. See Gravelines, a coastal fortress-town.
Let’s go modern. In early 1915, Big Bertha (a 16.5 inch howitzer weighing 42.5 tons) and other artillery began firing at Fort Douaumont in Verdun. The fort wasn’t lost until Marshal Joffre ordered it dismantled and the troops defending it transferred. Too bad the Germans attacked while the demolition teams were still inside trying to finish their work. There’s a reason the Germans swung north during WWII. It’s tough to take fortresses. Eben-Emael being the exception. For example, Fort Drum (the famed ‘Concrete Battleship’) despite being blasted to hell and back didn’t fall until 1945 when US Army Engineers boarded it and poured in fuel to burn and suffocate the survivors. Those thirty-five feet thick concrete walls must have helped.
Post-WWII they still have use. Take the odd situation in 1948 Palestine during the fight for control of Jerusalem. The Arab Legion were behind the walls of the Old City fighting off the Jewish besiegers in the New City who were themselves besieged by Arab and Egyptian field armies. In 1967 the Old City walls again helped the Arab Legion halt the Israeli forces for a while. Gibraltar, Cheyenne Mountain, et al.
There are many reasons missle defense is highly problematic but using this as an argument against it won’t pass muster. You can always build defenses that will stand up against any attack. Including nukes. It wouldn’t be fun but it’s possible. Trying to knock rocks, arrows, bullets, cannonballs, bombs and missles out of the air before they reach you is an completely divergent category. It’s the difference between a bullet-proof vest and karate chopping shotgun pellets.
Twelve days? The Turkish cannons were massive, and they started punching holes in the land wall surrounding Constantinople almost immediately. Only desperate work by the Byzantines – who repaired the damage every night with whatever was handy – kept the walls patched up enough to resist a final attack. For about six weeks, then came the final assault on May 29, 1453, one of the worst days in Western history.
I agree with a lot of your other points, but if Mehmed hadn’t arrived on the plains of Adrianople with serious firepower, Constantinople would’ve defeated yet another besieging army.
Yeah, but what about the Belgian fortresses? Krupp guns made fairly short work of those in 1914, although, in fairness, the Belgians didn’t have enough modern weaponry (ordered from the German Krupp factories in 1913! oops!) to properly defend themselves.
Anyhow, it’s not like I disagree with what you’re saying, but you can’t say that Wooly’s opinion is “entirely incorrect.” The development of cannons made even previously impregnable fortresses vulnerable – as long as the invaders had either superior firepower, more firepower, or equal/slightly lesser firepower combined with more men.
Well, that argument as an absolute won’t pass muster. But saying you “can always build defenses that will stand up against any attack” is ridiculous. No defense will ever be able to stand up against any attack. There will always be vulnerabilities. You even outline this in your examples, which consist solely of fortresses that eventually fell to sieges.
And that’s another reason why this missile shield plan is such bullshit. The Bushies are trying to sell this as some sort of ultimate protection for American citizens, yet it has serious flaws, and even if it is improved over the next few decades, it will never be perfect. Right now, the whole thing is nothing but a pipe dream at best, and a lie at worst.
At the end of the day, it’s about maintaining technological dominance. The US is in a position to continually maintain and extend its lead. Despite my many misgivings about the US government, I still prefer this course over the alternatives…
Are you seriously willing to justify any military initiative on this basis, regardless of feasibility? If the Army wanted to spend millions trying to cross humans with cheetahs in order to create a Cheetah-Man capable of running 60 mph, would that be better than losing our potential dominance in genetically-breeded superwarriors?
Your argument also ignores the fact that the military budget is finite. Any money sunk into this program could have been used for military research into more promising technology.
Personally, I think the future of missle interception is in airborne laser platforms.
Which, just as an aside, is wicked cool.
No way, it’s birds with laser beams attached to their heads. Fricken’ laser beams.
And once again we reach the ‘difficult’ versus ‘impossible’ which I rehashed for the nth time on this board just recently. After a certain point all I can do is throw up my hands and suggest making some friends with aerospace engineers with a long history in missile systems. They don’t bite. Really.
Your argument also ignores the fact that the military budget is finite. Any money sunk into this program could have been used for military research into more promising technology.
I wasn’t ignoring anything, discussions of strategic priorities on a macro level structured over the next 50 years was rather well outside the scope of my post, much less this topic.
Do your aerospace friends think it’s a good use of money to spend $10 billion a year on a deployable system that doesn’t even remotely work?
Of course they do. Who do you think is on the receiving end of the $10 billion boondoggle?
And once again we rehash the thought that there is some useless $10 billion widget…that’s not how it works.
So what are they building up there in Alaska? Artic circle candy?
In actuality, I’m pretty sure what’s going on is a) Republicans panties get wet at the thought of a magical space missile shield, which will let them urinate on the world at whim so b) Bush pretty much has to deploy whatever the hell so they can have their free pony.
Eyes…burning…mixed…metaphors…so…bad…
I’m not necessarily convinced that an anti-missile shield is the way to go, but I am pretty sure that some alternative, even if difficult to obtain, is needed to relying on diplomatic engagement/invasion of nuclear minipowers. Remember, a lot of the time simply the possibility of the US having a magical weapon can be very useful…
In other words, the $10 billion dollars isn’t to make the missile defense work. It’s to make the pretense convincing to possible future adversaries. If we spent any less than $10 billion dollars on the deployment (on top of the billions and billions on development) the psychological impact of the weapon would be diminished.
There is ample evidence that the USSR collapsed because it couldn’t keep up spending the way the US did, including imaginary programs like Star Wars. Now clearly we don’t have a similar rival in the world today, but don’t knock the psychological impact of this kind of endeavor.
Ample evidence my ass; the soviet archives show their military spending tapering off after the 1970s. How spending less on the military bankrupted them, I’m not sure.
Edit: oh good, someone saved me the trouble of copying in Francis Fitzgerald.
The very first paragraph from the very first link in that very Google search you posted (globalsecurity.org):
“In 1988 military spending was a single line item in the Soviet state budget, totaling 21 billion rubles, or about US$33 billion. Given the size of the military establishment, however, the actual figure was at least ten times higher. Western experts concluded that the 21 billion ruble figure reflected only operations and maintenance costs. […] Weapons produced by agencies such as the Ministry of General Machinebuilding [missiles] or the Ministry of Shipbuilding Industry [ships] were essentially provided as “free goods” to the Ministry of Defense.”
From the second link (globalsecurity.org again):
“As with the Soviet military budget, the official Chinese defense budget apparently covers salaries, but does not cover the research, development and acquisition of new weapons and equipment, which is funded through the budgets of the responsible ministries.”
From the third link (econ prof at Univ of Georgia):
“Soviet leaders have responded predictably to this comparative advantage. They know that if the Soviet Union were to distribute its resources among the military and civilian sectors in the same proportion as does the U.S., then it would cease to be a superpower. But a large sacrifice in military strength would produce little improvement in what would remain a weak civilian economy. Thus, Soviet leaders have lavished resources on the military sector, and created the military machine we confront today.”
From the fourth link (your boy Fitzgerald, the sentence after the “tapering off in the 70s” bit):
“It remained that way for a decade. According to later CIA estimates, Soviet military spending rose in 1985 as a result of decisions taken earlier, and grew at a rate of 4.3 percent per year through 1987.”
So no, it didn’t stay flat. And even if it the bookwork shows it was flat, see the above three sources on the realities of military funding.
From the fifth link (foreignaffairs.org):
“The slowdown in Soviet defense spending lasted too long to have been caused by technical problems or bottlenecks. Rather it appears to have been the result of a deliberate policy decision to peg the growth rate of defense spending to that of the economy as a … [whole]”
Last word added by me, it was not visible in the preview.
So with these five links form your Google, I’d think there is ample evidence that the USSR “couldn’t keep up spending the way the US did, including imaginary programs like Star Wars” (quoting myself here), and those same articles and others (including your Fitzgerald) explain why this spending from the 1950s until about 1970 was probably the largest factor of their collapse (from a long term point of view) and explains how “spending less” on the military bankrupted them (note the third article in particular).
Posted wrong link; meant the second one, this:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Politics/fitzgerald.html
So I have this straight now, it’s no longer “Reagan tricked the USSR into bankrupting themselves”; it’s Kennedy and Eisenhower tricked the USSR into bankrupting themselves? And how on earth does this relate to SDI?
You know, “Soviet growth until the 1970s was entirely due to an unrepeatable zero-productivity increase in economic inputs; after that they hit a wall, and eventually without growth their system collapsed” is a lot simplier explanation.