Has technology removed all honour and skill from warfare?

[rednose1]

As far as the honor in war is concerned.... There is no honor in war, war is a horrible ruthless act. Saying there is honor in battle is a way of selling ruthlessness of war on those who would otherwise object.

For the skill side of the arguement, everything takes skill. I can cook, but nowhere as good as a professional chef. I can play soccer, but would get trounched by any professional. Ditto for warfare, both today's weapons or medieval era. I can shoot a gun / hold a sword, but to hit a target 400yards away, or properly defend myself with a sword will take a skill level that I do not have.

 

[theparsonski]

Okay, my point about the SAS would only really apply if they were holed up and defending a building, similar to the men at Thermopylae. Obviously if you put that many SAS men in a forest with that many Taliban then they would win and look damn cool doing it.

HOWEVER, why not, instead of sending countless men to their deaths, have each warring nation train up an individual soldier and then have a Hunger Games style punch-up. Minimum loss of life, and still solves disputes. Plus, honour can be introduced because you can have rules.
Obviously it wouldn't work, but I still like the idea...

 

[ablac]

Your killing each other. Right or wrong that never has honour as you think of it. You have a very romanticised version of historical warfare. The only difference now is the technology, there was never honour to lose and thus none has been lost. War has never been like 'Gladiator' or 'Spartacus' or any way it has been portrayed in entertainment. It was mainly fought by the poor, they certainly died the most, and it mainly relied on cowardly tricks and dirty tactics (as you would think of them) they had little stake in the wars they were fighting either but they had to fight them either because they were forced or needed the money. Dont ever claim war had honour, its repulsive to suggest violence is anything but thuggish.

 

[RyuujinZERO]

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.

Arguable, you seem to have a very rosey view of warfare.

Wars havn't ever been about protecting your family from marauding tribes... from the earliest days war bands were typically peasants strong-armed into serving a powerful and well guarded tribal leader or governor and made to fight for whatever said leader damn well pleased (usually more land, more soldiers, more women).

And in the earliest days there were always ways of killing that'd be considered "cheap" were this some FPS (A 14 year old with a sling, assassins who stab people in the back while they sleep, poison. The british defeatted the french in several major battles by simply taking a bazillion untrained peasants with longbows and firing so many arrows at their lines of well equipepd and traiend soldiers that they got mowed down without a fight!)



Nope, the idea of honourable warfare is something Hollywood, bards and Joe Public love, but it's never been a reality. NEVER.

At least modern warfare if anything is a lot CLEANER; the entire Iraq war in a decade has killed less soldiers than most BATTLES in WW1 did

 

[BlackStar42]

Wars have always involved skill. Formation, terrain, subterfuge, stratagem...As for honour, not so much. At the end of the day, all wars have ever been are a bunch of young men far from home killing a bunch of different young men.

 

[F'Angus]

I see your point. Today it's sickening that a person can push a button and kill an enemy he never had to face.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

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.

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.

This isn't quite a true representation of old fahsioned warfare.

First off, it frequently wasn't simple. Although the individual soldier might only be told he was fighting for his lands, often the noble in charge of the battle would also be seeking monetary gain, to expand his own lands, or religious persecution (that sounds oddly familiar doesn't it?) Also, one of the biggest misconceptions of medieval warfare is that knights were some sort of wonderful battle changer. They could be something as simple as 'the guy who owned a sword and a horse' instead of just 'the guy who owned a sword.'

As for the Roman ideal, they were the people who pioneered the art of sending untrained village people in to fight their battles and die for an emperor they had never seen or heard about. Sure there were some who trained for years in the martial arts and knew what they were doing, but they were commanding slaves and peasants more often than not.

There has never been, isn't now, and probably will never be such thing as honour on the battlefield. Nowadays we look back with rose tinted glasses at hand to hand fighting and call it noble because we don't know which dirty tricks were used (for example people would dig spike traps to kill horses and people, kinda like modern landmines). In the future people will probaly look back and say 'has the ability to glass an entire continent from space taken the honour out of killing a man at such a short distance as a thousand yards with a rifle?

 

[DiZtAnT]

Honor?
It's a matter of opinion I suppose. As appealing as the thought of a lone warrior standing against his foes with a sword is, realistically I see no honor in two brutes chopping eachother up. Honor should come from respectable individuals who can avoid situations like that.

Skill on the other hand, has only changed it's meta.
Where pure strength and stamina used to determine the success rate, intelligence now plays a part. Technology has made it so any can fight on equal terms, depending on the level of the sides of course. If anything, it now requires more skill, as stamina and intelligence now play major roles on the battlefield.

This is all a matter of opinion though, of course.

 

[Evil mr dave]

There was a great quote i encountered in one of my skyrim playthroughts (and im paraphrasing as i dont remember word for word) that went something like this:

"Honour is just something that the old tell the young about so they will risk there lives".

The important thing to remember here is that there has always and will always be a place for a skilled soldier in any military, its just that now-a-days they find there ways into the special forces. To say that Modern combat doesnt require skill is a ludacris accertion, yes a 14 year old can pick up an AK-47 and be a threat to a modern soldier but that modern soldier is going to be able to out shoot that 14 year old any day of the week. and as far as one man not making a difference you should go and read up on what some people had to do to get the medal of honour in the states.

And speaking of honour, war is generally won by those who are willing to do either the more underhanded actions or those who are willing to lose more men (and sometimes both). the thing is back before tv and movies and the internet (and photographs) most people didnt realise just how terrible war was, all you had were the old telling the young of marching off to glory with a few good men to do right by there country (you know what i mean). and even then you always have people trying to romanticize war.

TLR version

War has always and will always be cowardly and brutal, there is no function difference between killing your enemy with a cruise missile or an apache gunship and crushing his skull with a mace or sliting the throat of a fallen knight.

 

[Naeras]

There was as much luck involved in "oldschool war" as it is now. If you're going to charge a rank of spearmen, you better hope you're lucky enough not to get hit by those spears. You also better hope that nobody attacks you from behind while you're being skilled and singlehandedly defeating four people with one hand tied to your back, or that you're standing in a muddy spot and slip(the ground gets muddy very fast when there's that many people around).

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

Ranged cheese has a long history. The first poster talks about up close and personal, hand-to-hand, alas archery skirmishing, bow cavalry, peltasts on hills, these are all very old forms of warfare. I get the yearning for the melee, I really do. What you are indulging in sir, is neo-medievalism, and the unfortunate news is that medieval warfare wasn't always up close and personal, or honourable. Crossbows, longbows, catapults, cav charges killing you with a lance before you can hit them with your sword, they might even ram the lance through your back, or the pikeman/spearman and his buddies work together, impale you together and shove you off. No contest of one against one there. The Romans also liked to soften up their enemies and if possible beat them with superior technology at range. Yes, bows, scorpions or a pilum sent through the heart of brave heroes, before they can get into sword range.

I get it though, I am disgusted at how cheesey and ranged heavy players are in feudal mp games like warband and shogun.

 

[templar1138a]

You want to talk about honor and skill? Why, in the good ol' days, we didn't use any knives, spears, or them newfangled bows! We used our own two hands! And when we could find one, we'd pick a rock up off the ground and bash our enemies' heads in! But never did we throw the rocks! That was dishonor at its fullest.

We didn't lay any animal skins on the cave floors either. We sat and slept on the hard rock ground with pride! And don't get me started on that thing all the kids are using these days. What's it called? Fire? Pish! Eating your meat raw strengthens the jaw, and sleeping through the cold night builds character!

 

[Something Amyss]

Honour in war is a load of crap anyway, so no.

 

[Something Amyss]

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.

If your only knowledge of Thermopylae comes from the movie or comic "300," that's totally correct.

Of course, even in the movie, the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae were a stalling tactic. They held the enemies off at a choke point (still possible these days in the same situation) and lost (because they never expected to win) allowing the Greek armies (not just Spartan) to rally. Oh wait, the "not just the Spartans" was also left out.

Not to mention the fact that the Spartans had many, many losses and some thorough thrashings. To use this as your only basis for comparing old warfare to new is kinda lame.

Look, I know that fetishising war is AWESOME and stuff, but the reality of the situation is far from the war porn fantasy.

 

[RustlessPotato]

You want to talk about honor and skill? Why, in the good ol' days, we didn't use any knives, spears, or them newfangled bows! We used our own two hands! And when we could find one, we'd pick a rock up off the ground and bash our enemies' heads in! But never did we throw the rocks! That was dishonor at its fullest.

We didn't lay any animal skins on the cave floors either. We sat and slept on the hard rock ground with pride! And don't get me started on that thing all the kids are using these days. What's it called? Fire? Pish! Eating your meat raw strengthens the jaw, and sleeping through the cold night builds character!

Oh Really ? When I was young, good sir, we had to use our own intestins as rope. You lot using real rope got it too easy.

 

[3quency]

English soldiers smeared shit on their swords to give enemies infections.

War hasn't become less honourable, it's always been brutal and unpleasant it's just quicker these days (well kinda).

 

[templar1138a]

Oh Really ? When I was young, good sir, we had to use our own intestins as rope. You lot using real rope got it too easy.

Your own intestines? Luxury! Growing up, we were lucky if we could afford so much as a spleen, let alone INTESTINES. And we couldn't afford to learn how to make rope even if we had intestines with which to make them! We had to grab a stick and poke whatever we wanted to move, hoping the stick would impale or be grabbed by the object.