Has technology removed all honour and skill from warfare?
- Thread starter Reiper
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First off, there is no "honor" in the act of killing. Maybe your reasons are honorable, like protecting others, or your country. However, whether you do this with a Gladius or a JDAM makes no difference. As for skill, its just an entirely different set of skills, at 200 yards the untrained have no chance of beating those who know what they are doing.
they can move as a group, but even the SAS would get slaughtered by 2000 taliban. theres too many, in every senario they would be in a lethal crossfire. and they cant hide, 300 people is not a small amount of people. in the woods, the taliban woulod probably all climb in trees, bang. SAS dead in 5 min. or less.SckizoBoy said:
I believe that there was never honour. Honour was started to keep the lords from abusing their peasants and prisoners during war. Skill is still an integral part of war. Whether it be in the form of a sword or Stinger. The only difference in my opinion is that in ancient warfare it was much easier to carve out a name as a good warrior because of the fewer number of combatants in the first place, so your attitude would often show in your reputation, and most people would rather be thought of fondly. The other side is that the bards are the ones who would spread stories of conquest and fame, and few people want to know that their lord goes around raping and pillaging at will, so the bards would often change the story to have a good vs. evil scenario. As for me, I would rather fight as a Viking because of my size and strength. In modern context that would make me an easier target for a stray bullet,and I like the idea of fighting in bloody melee.
Why do honor and skill matter in warfare? Trying to survive would be the only thing I care about.
A form of honor and skill has always continued to exist even in modern warfare. That kid with the AK-47 can still be killed just the same way. Tanks can still be destroyed. That plane dropping bombs on above can still be at risk, or forced into a one on one dogfight with another plane. There is still putting ones life on the line, which takes honor and bravery in itself. That has always been a constant.
Until now, anyway... Now that the ultimate form of cowardice has become the future of modern weaponry in the West. Drones. Unmanned weapons. No longer does that pilot have to put themselves at risk. No longer does the operator have to assess the situation, and make the decision whether to end the lives of their targets. Now, its just becoming a damn expensive video game.
Drones, like WMDs, in my opinion, are one technology that should not exist in warfare. If your cause isn't worth putting your very life at risk for, it isn't worth fighting for.
Until now, anyway... Now that the ultimate form of cowardice has become the future of modern weaponry in the West. Drones. Unmanned weapons. No longer does that pilot have to put themselves at risk. No longer does the operator have to assess the situation, and make the decision whether to end the lives of their targets. Now, its just becoming a damn expensive video game.
Drones, like WMDs, in my opinion, are one technology that should not exist in warfare. If your cause isn't worth putting your very life at risk for, it isn't worth fighting for.
I agreed with most of your post up until this point. As much as skill is important in warfare, sometimes you do get unlucky and when that happens you die. Your on patrol in Afghanistan and at a checkpoint an an IDE goes off in a truck that you're about to check, dead. You're unit is advancing when a stray artillery round lands on you, dead. You're a Japanese soldier stationed at Hiroshima when the bomb goes off, dead.HarryScull said:
Skill is about giving the enemy as few chances as possible, while giving yourself as many chances as possible and learning to use these chances as best you can. No amount of training can prevent any enemy from getting any chance to kill you because sometimes a six year old with a gun can kill a professional soldier, but that doesn't mean an army of them would be worth a damn.
I have to accept this point, I was a bit extreme (as you can probably tell I was pretty pissed of while I was writing this) and while luck is still involved you use skill to massively reduce your odds of being killed by something like, and almost all deaths can be attributed to a solder doing something wrong as opposed to "wrong place wrong time" (for example, you can dig in to avoid a mortar and take the appropriate action to disable its threat but no amount of skill can stop that 1 in a thousand shell that lands in your foxhole)chimeracreator said:
not meaning to be a dick or be disrespectful to dead solders but that's just how it is
I see your point, and even agreed at one time, but I've met a Korean War veteran and an active-duty Marine. Both were honorable men, and both were rather skilled. So I guess I'll say no.
Still, forget about war, you run the risk of slipping in the shower, or rolling out of bed in your sleep and dying. It's best not to dwell on it.
Keep calm and carry on.
Still, forget about war, you run the risk of slipping in the shower, or rolling out of bed in your sleep and dying. It's best not to dwell on it.
Keep calm and carry on.
I suppose nowadays you can't do much to "block" incoming blows ie bullets like you used to. Then again, the ability to block didn't help you in the old days when another guy walked up behind you while you were fighting his friend and cut your legs out from under you and left you to drown in the mud. If war way back when was less capricious, it wasn't for the lack of trying. And as people have pointed out, history is full of wily "unfair" tactics winning over bravado. Look at Agincourt. As I recall, the English let the French cavalry get mired in the mud and by their own plate armor and shot them full of arrows.
I do know that war is much harder to romanticize now; sure it's glamorized but in popular consciousness that glamorization is not nearly as total as it used to be. Back in the old days you didn't really get much by way of anti-war media, and even those that acknowledged that war wasted lives (epic poems, etc) tended to go "well, at least they died in a kinda cool way." I think that's all part of the reason why we tend to remember it so fondly and write recreate it in stories about badass guys with swords bashing each other and saving the world. Generally you don't see the same sort of treatment for, say, the Vietnam war.
I do know that war is much harder to romanticize now; sure it's glamorized but in popular consciousness that glamorization is not nearly as total as it used to be. Back in the old days you didn't really get much by way of anti-war media, and even those that acknowledged that war wasted lives (epic poems, etc) tended to go "well, at least they died in a kinda cool way." I think that's all part of the reason why we tend to remember it so fondly and write recreate it in stories about badass guys with swords bashing each other and saving the world. Generally you don't see the same sort of treatment for, say, the Vietnam war.