Has technology removed all honour and skill from warfare?

[loc978]

Every romanticizing of melee warfare is a load of bullshit. Most people bled out on those battlefields after being blindsided by an opportunist or an arrow. Single combat has never had any place on a battlefield.

We have removed the need to train for your entire life to be good for anything more arrow/cannon fodder, though (can get decent results out of a few months' training instead of a decade minimum now!)... so there's that.

 

[Costia]

Someone has been playing to much Call of Duty.....

I agree.
I live in Israel, warfare in urban territories is very complicated. A lot harder than the fights you had in medieval time. Then you at least knew who you were supposed to shoot.
Just watch some US army training programs on national geographic. If that's not skill I don't know what is.
Another complication is the technology - today infantry have to know to operate a lot of complex equipment and are probably expected to fix simple malfunctions as well.

TLDR: if anything, warfare became more complicated, not simpler.

 

[spartan231490]

'Honour' is a code of rules an individual chooses to follow.

Expecting others to follow the same code is naive at best, especially in a combat situation.

That is an exceptionally narrow definition of honor, one I do not agree with.

OT: Yeah, I agree. I have often thought exactly this, and my friends all think I'm retarded for it, but what the hell do they know. Especially the skill thing. Who dies now is more determined by who the enemy decides to shoot at first, I mean, it's not like you can train to dodge/block bullets. There is certainly some skill to it, in knowing what situations are too dangerous to go into it, but not as much as in melee combat.

I'd disagree. Yes, combined arms is a big thing, but that doesn't mean skill isn't involved. How much training does it take you to become a lieutenant? It's not exactly easy.

Well I am not sure rank is exactly reflective of your martial skill. Its really more a leadership / hierarchy thing. I mean, here in Canada, if you join the army with a university degree you are pretty much automatically a 2nd lieutenant

Pretty much the same here in the US. Not sure of exact rank, but a 4 year degree starts you off as an officer of some sort.

 

[Da Orky Man]

There's gonna be a lot of shit flying about the honour part. But my answer is no to the former and the latter, because a man who would behave honourably a millenium ago has no less reason to do so now. And as someone who has actually made use of a modern assault rifle and practiced fencing (which I know is not the same as real old swordfighting but shut up), I can tell you the assault rifle was much harder to use.

*cough* European Standard *cough*
Seriously though, An untrained Danish priest shot a European Standard rifle and killed a few Taliban warriors.

]

'European Standard rifle'? Pray tell/

 

[The Ubermensch]

I'd personally rather fight a war with swords and spears and shit instead of guns, because it's true, nowadays you can have the most experienced, hardened soldier that there is, and all it takes is for him to step on an IED and it's game over. Look at the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartan warriors held off an army of Persians estimated to be around the million mark. If that was, say, 300 SAS men against even 2000 Taliban insurgents, I reckon the Taliban would end up winning.

It's actually a huge amount more about luck than it is skill nowadays.

Ok, I have to step in here. Unless the insurgents got a massive drop on the SAS, and the likely hood of that happening is very slim as they are primarily Recon outfit, I don't think the SAS would lose a man in combat. You haven't seen these boys work, and you never will because if the SAS had taken Osama Bin'larden we wouldn't have heard about it. More SAS have died in training than they have in warfare; They are trained in geural warfare and small unit tactics, you have 300 of them I would think the entire 1st US marine Expeditionary Force would have a hard time.

As to the OP, my issue with war isn't so much Honour, I mean please, I'm not going to go into how much raping and pillaging was done under a banner. Killing has never been honorable, whats changed is the method, so called targeted killings with predator drones and the like. The difference between a predator drone and a guy in with a .50 Beretta is that the guy with the guns going to feel recoil, the guy flying the predator drone is probably fall asleep at his console while the drone is on autopilot.

Everyone can stop talking about skill as far as the soldier on the ground is concerned. US marines and the armies of the British commonwealth nations, as well as others (Israeli and Warsaw Pact armies, and SOME NATO armies) are pretty damn skilled when it comes to the art of killing. The issue is, if people in control booths controlling drones, or worse yet, politicians with fully automating killing systems, replace soldiers, well... I'm worried about who has their finger on the button.

I tell you what though; the soldier will always come up with a countermeasure.

However kids, stop confusing combat with a video game, K? All these fancy gadgets that you've played with are not normally available to the front line soldier, and the day they are the enemy has them and there is new tech that black ops is playing with.

 

[TheIronRuler]

There's gonna be a lot of shit flying about the honour part. But my answer is no to the former and the latter, because a man who would behave honourably a millenium ago has no less reason to do so now. And as someone who has actually made use of a modern assault rifle and practiced fencing (which I know is not the same as real old swordfighting but shut up), I can tell you the assault rifle was much harder to use.

*cough* European Standard *cough*
Seriously though, An untrained Danish priest shot a European Standard rifle and killed a few Taliban warriors.

]

'European Standard rifle'? Pray tell/

.
Compare the obsolete M16 variants from the 70s with today's European made rifles. Sweden and Belgium, for example, made some amazing arms that are used by the armies of NATO.

 

[SckizoBoy]

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.

I direct you to this -

Ok, I have to step in here. Unless the insurgents got a massive drop on the SAS, and the likely hood of that happening is very slim as they are primarily Recon outfit, I don't think the SAS would lose a man in combat. You haven't seen these boys work, and you never will because if the SAS had taken Osama Bin'larden we wouldn't have heard about it. More SAS have died in training than they have in warfare; They are trained in geural warfare and small unit tactics, you have 300 of them I would think the entire 1st US marine Expeditionary Force would have a hard time.

The SAS are trained to fight in small groups of no more than a couple sticks' worth at most. So, in the scenario you give, in a straight up death match, the SAS will make themselves scarce over an area of several square miles and good luck digging them up before it gets dark, and once it gets dark, start shitting yourself. During daytime, they'll pick off small detachments and pairs before disappearing again, and the next time you hear of them, they'll be miles away. With communications and various aspects of environmental and circumstantial training, adaptation and improvisation that is more 'uniform' than that of the insurgents, shall we say, they can keep themselves in small groups but remain in supporting distance to devastating effect. So much so that I think even Royal Marines would have a hard time trying to survive 48 hours against them.

 

[bificommander]

I don't know if fighting good with swords takes more skill than fighting good with combined arms. But about the honour thing:
Honour when fighting your direct opponent means reducing your chance of victory because you wish to give him a sporting chance or get more respect if you win. And if the latter two are more important to you than the increased chance of losing a war and the consequences that it brings, you shouldn't be fighting a war. If the consequences of losing are so slim that they don't matter, don't fight a war that'll kill thousands over them. If your honor is so important that you'll risk terrible consequences, you're a glory hound that doesn't deserve to decide over the lives of his commrades who will die if the desire for honor gets you killed. If the situation is truely so dire that fighting and dying becomes neccesary, shoot your enemies in the back, from a hiding place, from as far away as your sniper rifle will allow. If you respect your enemy too much for that, use diplomacy instead of war to get what you want.

In war an 'honorable' fight, like a stand against a superior force, should only occur if something has gone seriously wrong and there no longer is an option to beat the enemy with your own superior force. Those who just want a respectable contest of strength with a worthy enemy where the best man may win, join a sports team.

 

[Stu35]

It seems like individual far less relevant, since any emaciated 14 year old can pick up an ak-47, and be a threat to even a modern warrior who has trained their whole life.

You could pit the entire nation of Somalia armed with AK-47s against a Company of Royal Marines, and I'd wager the Royal Marines would be the ones walking out the other side.

The reason the Taliban use IEDs in Afghanistan is because in 2006 their attempts to overwhelm the isolated British outposts with firepower ended in their suffering horrendous casualties (and no, it wasn't because the British kept calling for air support - we're British, Air Support is a luxury we don't always get, and it was particularly rare in Afghanistan in 2006 when Britains main effort was the Iraq war).

So no, the Skill has not been removed from modern warfare, and the quality of ones infantry remains key - even in this age of predator drones and long range missile strikes.

 

[Bertylicious]

Pretty sure warfare removes the honour and skill from warfare seeing as how it's an excercise in men reducing one another to bloody gristle.

 

[Nickolai77]

As per the title, do you think that as we have advanced technologically, the honour and martial skill aspects of warfare have been greatly diminished?

By honour, I mean that old fashioned warfare was simple, up close and personal. You were often fighting to protect your lands and families from massacre, and a single skilled warrior could make a difference even against difficult odds. The battle made you stand face to face with your enemy. I do not want to label modern war as "cowardly" but I do think it required a different kind of guts to wade into a melee of death, or to charge across a battlefield, sword held high. I think the transition to warfare from close range to long range has affected this. Today, the conflicts our soldiers are involved in are much more complex, and often times an individual soldier has no stake in what the conflict is over.

Well, i've never really known a battle to be won or lost based on individual acts of bravery or individual skill (albeit that of the generals in tactics and strategy) in the era before gunpowder weaponry became the norm. The Battle of Stanford Bridge, where apparently a lone Danish warrior wielding a Danish axe was able to, for a while, hold off the whole English army because they had to cross this narrow bridge.

But that warrior did so well because of his positioning. Who wins and loses battles is often written from the start and based around the starting locations of the two sides. The French lost Agincourt because they had to charge across a muddy field, at Crecy they lost partially because the sun obscured their vision, the Romans lost at Teutoberg because they walked into an ambush. Harold I should have won the Battle of Hastings, being on a hill, but he only lost because the fyrd were ill-disciplined. It's all down to collective skill, training, equipment and location. The Romans thrashed the Gauls and the Britons because they consolidated their skill, training and equipment and fought as one unit. The Gauls and the Briton's fought as individuals, and promptly lost. It isn't too dissimilar to modern warfare, were the victor is still the one who is able to utilise superior skill at arms, equipment and maneuverability.

By skill, I mean that a medieval or Roman warrior for example, could train all their lives in the art of warfare, and could become exceptional in single combat. Almost everything that kills you in ancient warfare was preventable, for example, you would not have been disembowelled if you had parried, or you would not have an arrow in the knee if you had had your shield up. Modern warfare on the other hand, can get you killed in a million and one ways that you have no way of stopping or preventing. You can step on a land mine, a plane can drop a bomb, artillery can blow you to kingdom come. There are far more things that can kill you just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so dumb luck has a far greater effect than skill.

Many deaths in modern war are also preventable on a individual basis. Knowing when the move from cover to cover without getting shot strikes me as an obvious example. Or being observant enough to notice a minefield or threat of enemy bombardment and get away. Similarly, who won in pre-gunpowder conflicts was often not individually preventable. If the enemy get behind your forces with a fleet of heavy cavalry, even the bravest most skilled warriors fucked. A brave and skilled knight could still lose against a less skilled knight if his adversary can afford more armour and larger posse of squires.

It seems like individual far less relevant, since any emaciated 14 year old can pick up an ak-47, and be a threat to even a modern warrior who has trained their whole life.

But a squad of adequately trained soldiers will nearly always win against a squad of untrained child solders. Skill is just as relevant today as it was a thousand years ago in warfare. The thing is though it's always been about collective skill, not individual skill, even in the days before gunpowder weaponry and crossbows. The reason why i'm writing this in Latin script is due to the fact that the Romans well and truly understood that it was collective skill at arms that won wars. It's how we Europeans conquered most of the world.

 

[RubyT]

Throughout history, the vast majority of people didn't fight for THEIR lands or families, but for other people's land and power. Sometimes, the fools got (and still get) convinced otherwise. Which shows that learning from history is not happening.

Where is the honor of the Roman legion, who are professional soldiers, when 9 out of 10 times they fight peasant armies, you know, guys who couldn't care less WHO oppresses them? Where is the honor when the Roman legion when they pillage the villages now devoid of able men for their salaries?

There was never honor in warfare! This is all just demagogy to make war and its suffering acceptable for the victims, which are all participants.
And so, every soldier believes they are on the side of good and virtue. Wehrmacht, Taliban, US Army, Vietcong, Red Khmer ...

This threat is revealing the mental age of quite some people.

 

[Woodsey]

Not entirely sure that people's guts being rather horrifically dragged out by a big pointy piece of metal, likely as they shit and puke all over themselves, is what I'd call 'honourable' for either party involved.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

There is no honour in war, and no one should have to dedicate their lives to fighting. War is a dirty practice and should be avoided at all costs.

Also that sounded oddly serious for a post on the escapist from me so heres a picture of my licence

Spoiler

 

[FoolKiller]

There was never honour in warfare. The winner of previous wars just tried to dictate what the rules in future wars would be because it gave them the upper hand. That isn't honourable, just smart.

 

[Pyro Paul]

Honor is held by Warriors, not War.
And often, Honor is between Brothers in Arms... Not enemies of the Realm.

Through out all of history from the age of bronze and iron, Honorable warriors stood with their brothers and honored their memories... but out right genocided entire cities of those whom they saw as their foes. They would indiscrimantly slaughter Men, Women, Children, Livestock, Old, and Infirm.

the honorable knights of europe during the great crusades not only evicted the residents of Jerusalem, but they also chased down those that fled to ensure they would never come back...


If anything, Technology has acctually made war more 'honorable' as our troops see our foes as human rather then sub-human. that they are held to a standard both in skill and fairness and acctually follow a list of rules in order to engage their foes...

If you look at ancient warfare...
losses where racked in the thousands for both sides.

look at modern warfare of advanced industrial nations...
a loss of 300 troops is a tradegy and brings into question the entire operation.

 

[WanderingFool]

There's gonna be a lot of shit flying about the honour part. But my answer is no to the former and the latter, because a man who would behave honourably a millenium ago has no less reason to do so now. And as someone who has actually made use of a modern assault rifle and practiced fencing (which I know is not the same as real old swordfighting but shut up), I can tell you the assault rifle was much harder to use.

*cough* European Standard *cough*
Seriously though, An untrained Danish priest shot a European Standard rifle and killed a few Taliban warriors.

]

So... what is a European Standard rifle?

On topic, I think modern warfare reqiures another whole different set of skills and courage to engage. Before, when you had swords, you only had to worry about dying when the enemy was on top of you. Now, the enemy could be beside you, across the street, in that building down the road, or on that hill half a mile away, and your death will come just as easily. It reqiures more courage, IMO, to face something like that.

As for honor... fuck it. Honor is a relic from ages of old, that has no place, and should have no place in modern society.

 

[DazBurger]

Warfare have never been about honour.
Through history warfare have been about powerfull men attempting to become even more powerfull,
and the common man has always suffered from it.

Letting your troops plunder were a common form of payment up until modern times.

 

[Manji187]

As per the title, do you think that as we have advanced technologically, the honour and martial skill aspects of warfare have been greatly diminished?

By honour, I mean that old fashioned warfare was simple, up close and personal. You were often fighting to protect your lands and families from massacre, and a single skilled warrior could make a difference even against difficult odds. The battle made you stand face to face with your enemy. I do not want to label modern war as "cowardly" but I do think it required a different kind of guts to wade into a melee of death, or to charge across a battlefield, sword held high. I think the transition to warfare from close range to long range has affected this. Today, the conflicts our soldiers are involved in are much more complex, and often times an individual soldier has no stake in what the conflict is over.

By skill, I mean that a medieval or Roman warrior for example, could train all their lives in the art of warfare, and could become exceptional in single combat. Almost everything that kills you in ancient warfare was preventable, for example, you would not have been disembowelled if you had parried, or you would not have an arrow in the knee if you had had your shield up. Modern warfare on the other hand, can get you killed in a million and one ways that you have no way of stopping or preventing. You can step on a land mine, a plane can drop a bomb, artillery can blow you to kingdom come. There are far more things that can kill you just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so dumb luck has a far greater effect than skill.

It seems like individual far less relevant, since any emaciated 14 year old can pick up an ak-47, and be a threat to even a modern warrior who has trained their whole life.

Oh man, so many factors to consider, but generally speaking warfare by Western states has become very risk-averse. No more conscription, so every soldier is an asset (an investment: training). Also, one of the lessons from the Vietnam war was: soldier casualties (bodybags), if they are too visible and too many, make the home front queasy.

So there is now even more "force protection": ambushed on patrol/ recon? Call in air support.

The opponents of Western states are also risk-averse, since with all the technology (especially drones nowadays) if you are detected you are as good as dead and you never stood a chance in a direct confrontation anyway. So they wage guerilla warfare/ insurgency (asymmetrical warfare).

In this day and age, speed and stealth/ surprise is apparently the way to go if you want to last longer.

As to honour, I really don't know. It requires "a certain mindset" to be able to consider warfare honourable.