AHC: Find a way to make bayonets useful in modern combat

  • Thread starter Deleted member 123260
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Will you please remember that alternate history is about “thinking outside the box.”
Only a few dozen, First Workd nations can afford multiple layers of satellite lasers, ICBMs, cruise missiles, B-52s, stealth bombers, drones, precision guided bombs, artillery and mortars, etc. These days the majority of fighting is done in Third World nations with poor supply lines.
Consider what an oil shortage would do to First World supply lines. Also consider what happens when they run out of anti-tank missiles and it will take 18 months to re-open the production line.
 
So the NATO doctrine for holding off third shock army was to do bayonet fighting in German houses? Really? I thought it involved massive amounts of artillery, air power, armour and an inevitable escalation to nuclear weapons and if a few thousand housefuls of German civilians got pulverised then so what.

You think any defence of West Germany wouldn't have involved a lot of FIBUA with the inevitable use of bayonets by the units involved if they were issued?

You can't defend a town or village by nuking it, once the enemy gets into the houses you can't use air power or artillery to get them out (a lesson learned repeatedly from Stalingrad to Caen during World War 2) and armour dies quickly against motivated infantry in urban areas.
 
We seem to have a confusion between advocating the bayonet as a good weapon of choice and advocating having the bayonet as the weapon of choice as the last resort. Pistols have two uses. One is to create shock and awe so that you run away or to kill at arms length. The ordinary user under stress will not hit anything over 5 metres away, if that. It has to be selected, drawn and aimed. The bayonet is already drawn and almost aimed. It's shock and awe is in the closing to the enemy not in running away.

It works when it is routinely mounted in close actions. On a weapon of reasonable length it can be shortened (i.e. drawn back) and extended out, up or down. It does not need drawing nor does it run out. If the enemy are beyond easy bayonet reach, that is why you have a rifle with cartridges in the magazine.

The modern soldier is laden more heavily now than ever in the past, which is evidenced in the injuries from just carrying all that around with them. A bayonet is a lightweight alternative to a pistol. Perhaps a change in military philosophy from a heavily armoured soldier festooned with multi kilos of assorted kit that only has to jump out of an IFV and run a few scores of metres to one of a lightly equipped mobile soldier who can match the mobility of non peer irregular enemies. In the armoured vehicle world it is being suggested that, as anything feasibly armoured can be defeated by opposing armoured power, there is little point armouring beyond that which will defeat armed IFV. Say proof against 40mm fire.

The ongoing battle of armour and power of capital ships and armoured vehicles is being now fought between personal weapons and body armour etc. Once the personal weapon can defeat feasible weight body armour one cannot continue to combat it with more armour. The counter then may be mobility and the lightweight bayonet could form a small part of that philosophy.
 
You can't defend a town or village by nuking it, once the enemy gets into the houses you can't use air power or artillery to get them out (a lesson learned repeatedly from Stalingrad to Caen during World War 2) and armour dies quickly against motivated infantry in urban areas.

WWIII wouldn't have worked that way in Germany, with the W.P. attack plans planning on early and often Chem and Tacnuke usage, followed by retaliatory NATO nukes and chemicals on those incoming Pact spearheads trying to hide out in a small town

There won't be many living German civilians around to worry about in areas being fought over, because most built up areas wouldn't be built up anymore from 1 to 20 kt tacnukes banging off all around.
 
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