This kind of relentless simplicity should be the aesthetic of all engineers. Personally, i think if we had gone to war with the USSR, they would have won just by surviving the dust and breaks in logistic chains. (Assuming, for the sake of rhetoric, that the human race wasn't exterminated by radiation.)
>they would have won just by surviving the dust and breaks in logistic chains.
Where did this myth come from where US/NATO weaponry were these delicate things but for some reason Soviet weapons were wonderfully engineered. We saw the US go into various conflicts against various enemies during the cold war and get a real life test of its methods and equipment in Korea and Vietnam and later in the Balkans and Iraq.
The Red Army saw action in Afghanistan where an largely unfunded resistance fought them off. Later, in Georgia, we saw how delicate the Soviet-era equipment is and how poor Russia's ability to maintain a supply chain is.
If I had to go to war tomorrow, I'd want NATO's weaponry, not Putin's. I'll carry the AR15 instead of the AK47, thanks. It has longer effective range, better accuracy, and less weight.
AR15 cannot survive harsh environments. I saw many photos of American soldiers using AK47 in Iraq. Israeli Navy Commando probably still using it(try to dive and then shoot with an AR15).
And from my personal experience with M-16 you need to spend a lot of time cleaning this plastic toy, and when you jump from tanks, apcs and hit it on some metal by mistake.... good luck. I could take my Galil(Israeli "clone" of AK47) and just throw it on down on sand from a story high, pick it up and continue shooting. Can you put AR15 on the ground and drive a tank on it and then pick it up and continue shooting ?
And the sentence about Afghanistan is completely bonkers. US /Saudis spent many billions on arming islamists against SA.
On the other hand NATO just lost to a bunch of drug traffickers over there ...
Anedcotes aren't data. I've seen pictures of broken imacs, but that doesn't mean its a poor product. The biggest problem with the AR15 in in Iraq/Afghanistan was soliders not getting ammo fast enough or prefering its higher fire rate for suppressing fire and eating through ammo quickly. Nor is it plastic, the body is 7075 aluminum plate. These modern materials save 3 lbs of weight compared to the wood casing of the AK product.
>US /Saudis spent many billions on arming islamists against SA.
Still unfunded compared to a nation state on par with the USSR and all its resources. A largely unfunded rebel movement chased off the Red Army. That's a fact.
The people of the Soviet Union suffered 26,000,000 deaths, and presumably some multiple of that as casualties during the Second World War. Clearing anti-personnel mines by footfall is, given an abundance of feet, an elegantly simple engineering solution. Operational aesthetics are probably another matter. On the other hand, the way one deals with matters of life and death is a matter of life and death.
There are some lessons to be drawn in regard to simplicity from Soviet [or American or Costa Rican] military doctrine. But it's important to keep in mind the context.
In the book, he talks about the penal anti-minefield battalions, right before he explains that if the Nazi's had realized and used the hatred the average Russian soldier felt against their taskmasters, the Soviet Union would have redily fallen.
Maybe the western way costs more in terms of resources, but at least produces more loyal soldiers.
My impression is that the average Soviet soldier was little different than soldiers elsewhere: motivated by a combination of patriotism, loyalty to immediate comrades in arms, a sense of internal discipline and a fear of external discipline. They grumbled and were exploited. They were also rational in their beliefs that their enemy would not welcome their surrender with humane treatment as a top priority - a belief that was more and more justified by experience.
The Soviets and the Nazis were engaged in total war. Motivated by racism, the Nazis tended to favor extermination of 'the Slavs' over winning their hearts and minds.
As for the 'Western Way' it has increasingly become reliant on mercenaries and proxies. There is a scale upon which the lives of the human resources at its disposal are valued. Then again, that's the nature of all militaries.
The Winter War (Soviet Union against Finland) provides a useful insight. The Russians were incompetent on the offensive, they should have crushed the Finns easily.
However when the Finns took to attacking they found that individual Russian soldiers died very, very hard - the conditions they would endure and continue fighting through were astonishing.
The same spirit can be seen time and time again in other circumstances, for instance the Blitz attitudes of civilians during WW2, or Shock and Awe later on.
People endure when they are being attacked. They may not be inspired to attack back, but in terms of not giving up the human spirit can be incredible.
The Soviet army during the Winter War was very, very different from its 1945 version, both in terms of organization/training/experience and equipment. Winter War was somewhat of a wake-up call in fact.
The Soviet Union did not have the capacity to withstand the expected losses in the European Theater for very long.
Soviet planning of the era revolved around maintaining operational and strategic initiative at all costs, and fighting an offensive war. The hinge point was how quickly the red army could break through and gain operational freedom versus how quickly the U.S could land a resupply and reinforcement effort in Europe. Soviet planners give very narrow chances for success.
This hasn't got much to do with Soviet preparedness in the 80's, and the soviets had fully mechanized their division and motorized their logistics tail by then.
Lend-lease did contribute significantly to the soviet's logistic capacity in the second world war, notably the jeep and the deuce-and-a-half Studebaker trucks, both regarded very highly and subsequently used as model designs for the UAZ And Zil.
