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Jedi Master Spock
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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:10 am

Well, military experience is an education in and of itself, and it's an education dealing with certain specific things. The study of military strategy is an interesting field, and probably one that most officers outside of technical specialties will learn at least a little bit of, especially officers aspiring to the top command jobs.

It's true there are a great many people out there with some measure of military experience, and most of those aren't an expert in whatever you're looking up at the moment - even Wong isn't really an expert in physics, just in certain applications of physics.

The reason why military strategy is such an interesting field is that there are relatively few professionals involved with designing and analyzing military strategy, and even those are known to be not merely wrong, but completely and terrifyingly wrong in practice quite often. We could take a tour of the major strategic blunders of history; most were made by people we should consider experts.

I think, when considering military expertise, a very nice example would be the debate I had with Thanatos over Battletech vs WH40k. Thanatos knows more about actually using a tank than I do; however, I know more about physics. The result is that his information about how modern tanks actually work was better than mine, but his calculations and extrapolations were weaker. The result was a nice debate in which we both learned things; his military experience was not the end of the debate, but it certainly wasn't irrelevant to our discussion.

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Who is like God arbour
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Post by Who is like God arbour » Mon Jun 01, 2009 6:51 am

Jedi Master Spock wrote:The reason why military strategy is such an interesting field is that there are relatively few professionals involved with designing and analyzing military strategy, and even those are known to be not merely wrong, but completely and terrifyingly wrong in practice quite often. We could take a tour of the major strategic blunders of history; most were made by people we should consider experts.
Well, as already the German Generalfeldmarschall Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke, an approved expert in strategy of the latter 1800s, has said:
  • »No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.«

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Post by GStone » Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:06 pm

ILikeDeathNote wrote:Would I trust a first class private in the army to know the same as a first lieutenant in the air force?
When it comes to what you could do for dog fighting in the air, I might be more inclined to believe the air force guy and when it came to urban combat, the army guy, but it'd depend on the statements they make.

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Mr. Oragahn
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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:23 pm

ILikeDeathNote wrote:
GStone wrote:
Guest authors would serve this purpose well, especially since some of the sdn members are military people.
Would I trust a first class private in the army to know the same as a first lieutenant in the air force?

In way too many places (including what I've seen from SDN) someone in the military thinks they're the final authority on the board for all military matters. So yeah talk about appeal to credentials. In one board I go to we banned a commissioned lieutenant in the Navy because he thought his "military expertise" entitled him to basically run the board and usurp the guy who actually pays $100 out of his own pocket to run the site.
Seems to be an entirely different problem here.

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Post by 2046 » Mon Jun 01, 2009 10:19 pm

Jedi Master Spock wrote: it's a bit long-winded.
Damn, and here I thought I'd cornered the market on that. Thus, I just can't resist turning the tables on the weird old yarn of theirs:

<detractor satire> AH-HA!!! See how obsessed with Darkstar he is? We've known the whole time he wants to be Darkstar. He's even trying to copy his excessive verbosity! </detractor satire>

Anyway, though, I think this sort of thing is good as a concept. I'd imagine he's paraphrasing heavily from the "Military Strategy" book he acknowledges.

However, a brief perusal suggests it is written under the mindset of "edumacatin' dem Trektards and RepubliTards", which (knowing Wong) will have the effect of weakening the good initial concept. Potentially useful concepts will be watered down or lost entirely as Trek or modern political examples are shoe-horned or outright smashed into submission as case studies for the now-nullified concepts, or vice versa.

Still, though, my compliments on a nifty idea, <detractor satire>even if it is conceptually based on my previously-noted Basics and Planet-Killers pages</detractor satire>.

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Post by ILikeDeathNote » Tue Jun 02, 2009 3:08 am

Mike DiCenso wrote: Really? Which forum was this, if you don't mind my asking.
-Mike
Not gonna say.

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Post by Kazeite » Mon Jul 13, 2009 11:38 am

Mike DiCenso wrote:Exactly. With the ridiculous level of technology that Star Wars is supposed to have according to the Saxtonites, you have to wonder why Vader's injuries were never healed using cloning and stem cell therapies to regenerate or replace his lungs, legs, arms, and remove the external scarring. The use of cybernetics should have only been an interm means by which to keep Vader alive long enough for the other techniques to regenerate his body.
Death Star novel mentions that Vader was given an opportunity to be placed into a new, more advanced suit, but to do that, he would have to have had his prosthetics disconnected and his life support systems temporarily disabled, which was considered too risky, and most likely fatal.

And apparently that's it - no regeneration, no cloning, no nothing - just cybernetics.

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