Great predictions in military history.

[Kding]

Damn he has aged.

 

Besides that one wasn't the President's fault. The troops made the sign and hung it. It was the sailor's fault you see. Not the President's fault. Not a bit. No sirree.

 

 

Its a stressful job. I wouldn't want it.

 

As to the banner... I wonder if someone saved it & how much they could get for it on e-bay if they could authenticate it.

[shep854]

Its a stressful job. I wouldn't want it.

 

As to the banner... I wonder if someone saved it & how much they could get for it on e-bay if they could authenticate it.

 

It probably went into the National Archives.

[Richard Young]

Douhet and the likes actually expected the use of poison gas in bombs. So they were somehow never proved to have misunderstood effectiveness - just what types of munition would be employed.

"Great" predictions:

 

- Iraq's oil revenues would pay its reconstruction phase (Wolfowitz and other Neocons)

 

- Submarines would kill surface ships with immunity (Jules Verne, ok, does not really fit the topic)

 

- Missiles will make manned airplanes obsolete quickly (50's Brits, and probably even more people today)

 

- Imperial German "risk fleet" would deter the British

 

- French expectations for a trench war in 1940

 

- Domino theory (ok, it's a more political than military)

 

- "American" 21st century (same)

 

"domino theory" is proved correct by events...

[Brian Kennedy]

"domino theory" is proved correct by events...

 

Because the rest of Southeast Asia turned Communist?

[Colin]

Because the rest of Southeast Asia turned Communist?

 

 

Chin Peng in his book about Malay conflict mentioned that during his time in Beijing that the Communist leadership did have a plan for the eventually takeover of all of SE Asia, They however were not pleased with the Malay conflict considering it premature and the correct conditions for revolution did not yet exist, they turned out to be right. I think the problem is that the Chinese took a much longer view of the conflict and felt that they had to undermine regime prior to an invasion or staging an uprising. To people weaned on five year cycles such as we have here, they would not see the pattern as well. Luckily for us, the incessant bombardment of poplar culture onto the Chinese was to great for the Communist party to shield the masses from, being defeated by Brittany Spear and her cohorts must hurt!

[Brian Kennedy]

Go Britney!

 

Re Vietnam, some historians do make an argument that the fact that we were willing to sink such massive resources and time into the conflict deterred the Sovs/Chinese from fomenting revolution elsewhere later ("If they're gonna fight so hard for a pissant country like Vietnam then jeez"...) Don't really know if that's provable though.

 

Chin Peng in his book about Malay conflict mentioned that during his time in Beijing that the Communist leadership did have a plan for the eventually takeover of all of SE Asia, They however were not pleased with the Malay conflict considering it premature and the correct conditions for revolution did not yet exist, they turned out to be right. I think the problem is that the Chinese took a much longer view of the conflict and felt that they had to undermine regime prior to an invasion or staging an uprising. To people weaned on five year cycles such as we have here, they would not see the pattern as well. Luckily for us, the incessant bombardment of poplar culture onto the Chinese was to great for the Communist party to shield the masses from, being defeated by Brittany Spear and her cohorts must hurt!

[Paul in Qatar]

I came across this grate site, which I cite:

 

 

"...The bow is a simple weapon, firearms are very complicated things which get out of order in many ways...a very heavy weapon and tires out soldiers on the march. Whereas also a bowman can let off six aimed shots a minute, a musketeer can discharge but one in two minutes."

--Colonel Sir John Smyth 1591

 

"...As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, you just can't do it."

Rear-Admiral Clark Woodward, USN 1939

 

 

"There has been a great deal said about a 3,000 miles high-angle rocket. In my opinion such a thing is impossible for many years. The people who have been writing these things that annoy me, have been talking about a 3,000 mile high-angle rocket shot from one continent to another, carrying an atomic bomb and so directed as to be a precise weapon which would land exactly on a certain target, such as a city. I say, technically, I don't think anyone in the world knows how to do such a thing, and I feel confident that it will not be done for a very long period of time to come...I think we can leave that out of our thinking. I wish the American public would leave that out of their thinking."

--Vannevar Bush, 1945

 

(On the Manhattan Project)

"That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done...The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives."

Adm. William Leahy, USN, 1945

 

(Famous NYT editorial, I love this one)

"That Professor Goddard with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react -- to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools..."

--1921 The Times apologized in 1969 when we landed on the moon.

[Richard Young]

Because the rest of Southeast Asia turned Communist?

 

Cambodia and Laos darn sure did...

[Ken Estes]

Cambodia and Laos darn sure did...

To what advantage...? Really Richard, the usual 'best defense' is to assert that our stand in SWA bought time for the Thais to get their stuff together and resist the next falling domino..... Barring that, you are left with the old saw, revived by NeoCons for the present disaster, that we fought them there vice in the steets of SFO, LAX. So sad, so wasteful.....

[swerve]

Cambodia and Laos darn sure did...

 

And Cambodia & Vietnam promptly went to war with each other, thus stopping dead any further expansion.

[lastdingo]

The Domino theory was never proved correct by events.

It wasn't about "the Communists wasn't SE Asia", but about "if one country falls, the others will as well".

South Vietnam fell, Laos and Cambodia fell - but no more. So it was WRONG.

 

It's a no-brainer that the socialists wanted to add more countries to their bloc. All alliances and ideologies want to do that.

But that's much less than what the Domino theory asserted. It asserted how that would happen, and it was wrong. Socialist expansion even as it happened post-'54 did not happen according to the Domino theory.

 

It was perfectly OK to lose one or more countries, as long as the resilience in the others was increased in time. That contradicts the Domino theory and that's why the Domino theory provoked wasteful policies.

 

Only the Domino theory made it reasonable to fight so fiercely for a single, unimportant country - without this wrong theory we would have been able to see that more peaceful, economic and political means could have achieved as much and left SE Asia and the USA in a better state by 1975, at much lower costs.

[Jim Martin]

To what advantage...? Really Richard, the usual 'best defense' is to assert that our stand in SWA bought time for the Thais to get their stuff together and resist the next falling domino..... Barring that, you are left with the old saw, revived by NeoCons for the present disaster, that we fought them there vice in the steets of SFO, LAX. So sad, so wasteful.....

 

 

Uhhhh, actually we're attracting great numbers of asshats to Iraq and Afghanistan, where we can shoot them. As opposed to their coming to the US, where we wind up with lawyers and courts.

[Guest aevans]

To what advantage...? Really Richard, the usual 'best defense' is to assert that our stand in SWA bought time for the Thais to get their stuff together and resist the next falling domino..... Barring that, you are left with the old saw, revived by NeoCons for the present disaster, that we fought them there vice in the steets of SFO, LAX. So sad, so wasteful.....

 

Stefan Possony once observed to Jerry Pournelle that probably one of the smartest things we ever did during the Cold War was to engage in potlatches like Vietnam and SDI, precisely because we could afford to "waste" the resources, win or lose, where the Sov/Chicom world couldn't. IOW, think of it as an investment...

[Brian Kennedy]

Uhhhh, actually we're attracting great numbers of asshats to Iraq and Afghanistan, where we can shoot them. As opposed to their coming to the US, where we wind up with lawyers and courts.

 

As somebody whose name I forget pointed out, that's sort of like saying "let's build one super-dirty hospital, so we can get all the germs in one place and kill 'em all!"

[Mote]

Stefan Possony once observed to Jerry Pournelle that probably one of the smartest things we ever did during the Cold War was to engage in potlatches like Vietnam and SDI, precisely because we could afford to "waste" the resources, win or lose, where the Sov/Chicom world couldn't. IOW, think of it as an investment...

 

Didn't the Soviets not actually increase their defense spending during the Reagan era? I'd also question the unaffordability of the Soviet investment in Vietnam.

[Guest aevans]

Didn't the Soviets not actually increase their defense spending during the Reagan era? I'd also question the unaffordability of the Soviet investment in Vietnam.

 

With the Reagan initiatives, it wasn't how much they actually increased spending, it was the realization of how much keeping up was going to cost. I don't think it was the only cause, but it certainly contributed to the eventual crisis of confidence in '89-'91.

 

As for Vietnam (and the Middle East to maybe even a larger degree) all of those SAMs, AAA, tanks and trucks didn't come out of thin air.

[JWB]

With the Reagan initiatives, it wasn't how much they actually increased spending, it was the realization of how much keeping up was going to cost. I don't think it was the only cause, but it certainly contributed to the eventual crisis of confidence in '89-'91.

 

As for Vietnam (and the Middle East to maybe even a larger degree) all of those SAMs, AAA, tanks and trucks didn't come out of thin air.

Vietnam and Afghanistan cost the USSR far more than countering SDI. To do the later Moscow simply pulled the MARV out of its hat.

[Kenneth P. Katz]

I recall hearing that the battle-hardened Iraqi Army and the elite Republican Guard were going to kill tens of thousands of Americans and their allied during Op Desert Storm.

[Kenneth P. Katz]

Lots of experts, most notably George C. Marshall, predicted that the Arabs would quickly crush the Israelis in 1948.

[Kenneth P. Katz]

That is questionable. It is unprovable, but maybe the war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia bought time, so that Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia could develop themselves to the point where they were less vulnerable to Communist insurgencies.

 

The Domino theory was never proved correct by events.

[jakec]

CIA hilariously predicting three weeks after the first Soviet A-bomb test in August 1949 that it would most likely not take place until mid-1953.

[Mote]

With the Reagan initiatives, it wasn't how much they actually increased spending, it was the realization of how much keeping up was going to cost. I don't think it was the only cause, but it certainly contributed to the eventual crisis of confidence in '89-'91.

 

As for Vietnam (and the Middle East to maybe even a larger degree) all of those SAMs, AAA, tanks and trucks didn't come out of thin air.

 

Agreed that they didn't come out of thin air, but I imagine its rather cheaper to send over SAMs and tanks (and not top-tier ones at that) than it is to support a five hundred thousand man army engaged in a COIN campaign with near continuous major bombing raids on North Vietnam.

 

 

Vietnam and Afghanistan cost the USSR far more than countering SDI. To do the later Moscow simply pulled the MARV out of its hat.

 

There wasn't even a need to do that. SDI was a complete technological boondoggle and absolutely hopeless. The space based components would have been enormously expensive and had any of them been deployed, fairly easily countered. Without the space-based components, the ground-based system would have been hopelessly overwhelmed.

[Guest aevans]

Agreed that they didn't come out of thin air, but I imagine its rather cheaper to send over SAMs and tanks (and not top-tier ones at that) than it is to support a five hundred thousand man army engaged in a COIN campaign with near continuous major bombing raids on North Vietnam.

 

With all due respect, that's very simplistic thinking. The figure of merit is not the absolute value of resources committed, but the value relative to the overall economy of the investor. The war in vietnam didn't stop us from getting to the moon, among other things. It's arguable that financial shortcomings in the Soviet space program were at least in part due to Vietnam.

[Brian Kennedy]

It's arguable that financial shortcomings in the Soviet space program were at least in part due to Vietnam.

 

You have a source on that?

[Guest aevans]

You have a source on that?

 

Nope, pure speculation. We know space funding and interest went down after Kruschev was gone. One can make an argument that it was in the interest of actually winning the Cold War on the ground than making propaganda points in space. But one might not be able to prove it even it was true.