Military"peers' of the US

The soviets used firepower+manoeuvre to kill more Germans faster. The US tried to use firepower before manoeuvre to minimize own casualties. There's a huge difference. Like I've said before, if we landed Chuikov's 8th guards Army on Iwo Jima they would clear the island of Japanese in a couple of days max...

Except that the Soviets used firepower + maneuver from a completely different viewpoint. The USA had the firepower and used it to save lives, the Soviets sustained far too many casualties in 1941-2 to have any other option. *All* Allied armies by the end of WWII were over-reliant on firepower. And it worked. There is IMHO no reason to criticize the USA on these grounds and give the USSR a pass, the moreso if we factor in how *Soviet* overreliance on firepower could and did lead to problems such as in the Battle of Seelow Heights.

Too, the WAllies were fighting a war which did not really reward tactical brilliance in terrain hardly conducive for it. The Soviets, by comparison, were waging a huge ground war that did offer such room, and were the only power in WWII with the technological and conceptual leaps to wage a mechanized war (however what their concepts suggested and what they actually did wound up having in-name-only resemblances for a good part of their war, and were infeasible without all those US trucks and radios during it).

In WWII the Soviets were without question the most modern belligerent of all the powers, and certainly of the Allies. They did this by precisely wanting to fight a war with machines instead of human life and seeking to use very complicated and rugged machinery. Of course what they got was very different.
 
I doubt Chuikov's 8th guards Army could have cleared Iwo Jima any faster than the USMC and USN. I believe Iwo is too small and rocky for mechanized maneuver combat, or much in the way of maneuver of any but small formations.

Besides, why is it bad to use technology and expend large amounts of ammunition instead of expending human lives? A lot of folks knock the USA for having lower casualty numbers than other countries in wars. What is wrong with that?

AdA, consider the implications of Snake defending the American military against your arguements.

The moreso when we again remember that the USSR did a lot of the exact same things in practice, relying on machines instead of manpower for most of its last two years in WWII. The Soviet army that built the Warsaw Pact relied on mass firepower and overkill levels of firepower at that, ran on trucks, not legs, and managed to do things like massing 8:1 superiority in manpower and a rolling thunder in artillery superiority at key points, and actually was able and willing to switch to the sectors where it succeeded at individual points if it failed at others to keep the offensives going.

Any criticism of the USA of WWII for overreliance on firepower *must* apply to the USSR also, magnified by the reality that this Soviet reliance was a matter of necessity, not choice, as the USSR's own victories in 1941 and 1942 depleted Soviet manpower far too much for the USSR to have any other options, where the USA was still raising manpower in 1945.
 
numbers

The USSR took more combat casualties in the final drive to Berlin than the US did in the whole war. The USSR never compromised its operational conduct by searching to minimize casualties the way the US Army did.
Every Army uses fire and manouver. Its tacticts 1.0.1. Every account of Waterloo bashes Ney for not using fire and manouver properly. But the US, that had fought very agressively in WW1, took the balance towards an excessive reliance on firepower. When they had to crack a strong defensive position they either send in the poles, like in Casino, or bombed it until it it was defended by a few half dead shellshocked german zombies, as in Cobra. The one battle were they tried to go in and fight it without landscaping the place first was Hurtgen Forest, and see the drama they made about it.
I'm not saying that the US soldiers would not fight. They could, did well on ocasion, and no one acuses the US Army of lack of courage. They were not expected to "demerder" themselves the way other Armies were, and that somehow compromises their training and basic fighting abilities.
And Snake, you, of all people, acusing the Soviets of being too cautious with their soldiers lives...
 
Firepower issues

Let me make myself clear.
1. For most Armed Forces, Air power is a luxury. Infantry Units are trained to get their job done without it, and the few avaiable sorties are reserved for priority missions. In colonial wars french, portuguese, even british units, could never be sure of getting air support when they requested it. The US has soo much air power that it is in the unique position of granting most of its troops requests. Like a rich kid who nows that daddy will allways be there to pay the bills, the incentive to do well is reduced. Other armies are like the poor kid that must do well at school because there is no trust fund to pay the bills.
2. Rich countries value hunan lives more, and the current "zero casualties " dream has hurt everyone. The US Army as actually beneficted a lot from its combat experience, and is probably now in a better shape then ever, because it has a quadre of combat experienced Officers and NCO very few other armies have.
3. Its not just a WW2 thing. Think Korea, VietNam, etc. VietNam was probably the low point of tech reliance. I think the light divisions were a great idea. They were never meant to be deplyed in Europe facing the Reds. They would form the base from wich lighter forces for other missions would be raised, and they would provide a place for the Riflemen to just be Riflemen again.
4. Lets give a non US example. When the French police used hundreds of SWAT, etc to surround a single terrorist in Marseille it gave the rest of the lunnies out there that one man against the state image that motivates them.
5. Trainning your people to pause and call for airsupport when they have a 10-1 advantage is fine if you're allwyas going to have that airpower. When you don't you'll miss it. Missing it might make you fail.
6. How much firepower would the US have used to clear the Falklands? would US forces have attacked in the conditions the Brits did?
7. Some day someone in the US will write a paper to say that "manned rifles" are obsolete and that wars will be won on high tech alone.
8. Its hard to root for a guy who brings a F1 car to a FFord race. Maybe I'm seeing the US from the point of view of the kid from the wrong side of the tracks who allways thinks rich kids are soft.
And I remenber reading on "the Art and Science of motorcycle roadracing" an advise from (I think) Kenny Roberts. If you have the faster bike, pass your opponent in a straight. If you dice whim him in a corner that will encourage him to fight back. If you overpower him he'll have an excuse to settle down. So maybe the "laser them and JDAM them" school is the way to go. Maybe I'm clinging to an old school romantic ideal...
 
The USSR took more combat casualties in the final drive to Berlin than the US did in the whole war. The USSR never compromised its operational conduct by searching to minimize casualties the way the US Army did.
Every Army uses fire and manouver. Its tacticts 1.0.1. Every account of Waterloo bashes Ney for not using fire and manouver properly. But the US, that had fought very agressively in WW1, took the balance towards an excessive reliance on firepower. When they had to crack a strong defensive position they either send in the poles, like in Casino, or bombed it until it it was defended by a few half dead shellshocked german zombies, as in Cobra. The one battle were they tried to go in and fight it without landscaping the place first was Hurtgen Forest, and see the drama they made about it.
I'm not saying that the US soldiers would not fight. They could, did well on ocasion, and no one acuses the US Army of lack of courage. They were not expected to "demerder" themselves the way other Armies were, and that somehow compromises their training and basic fighting abilities.
And Snake, you, of all people, acusing the Soviets of being too cautious with their soldiers lives...

When did I do that? I said the USSR had to do this by necessity because it was running out of manpower. The USA would have still be raising manpower had the war gone on longer. If Soviet strategy had worked as it had been intended to, the USSR would have been relying on machines and air power far more than it did IOTL. What happened to it IOTL was the consequence of the gruesome Pyrrhic victory of 1941 and the mistakes and learning from them of 1941-2.
 
When did I do that? I said the USSR had to do this by necessity because it was running out of manpower. The USA would have still be raising manpower had the war gone on longer. If Soviet strategy had worked as it had been intended to, the USSR would have been relying on machines and air power far more than it did IOTL. What happened to it IOTL was the consequence of the gruesome Pyrrhic victory of 1941 and the mistakes and learning from them of 1941-2.


"They did this by precisely wanting to fight a war with machines instead of human life"
"The USSR, it tends to be forgotten, was as addicted to over-reliance on firepower as the USA was"

Here. I might have taken it a bit out of context, and in fact it didn't sound much like your usal line of thought, but I've read it as a paralel btw the US and Soviet styles, wich I though was a bit forced.
 
"They did this by precisely wanting to fight a war with machines instead of human life"
"The USSR, it tends to be forgotten, was as addicted to over-reliance on firepower as the USA was"

Here. I might have taken it a bit out of context, and in fact it didn't sound much like your usal line of thought, but I've read it as a paralel btw the US and Soviet styles, wich I though was a bit forced.

It is my usual line of thought, which is why this is puzzling. The superpowers were immensely reliant on firepower in WWII, to degrees not matched by either their allies or their enemies. The USSR *wanted* a war with machines instead of mountains of corpses, it got the latter because of its mistakes in 1941-2. The Stavka VGK never commended Soviet generals for sacrificing human life wastefully or stupidly, and in fact condemned them.
 
tempo

Let me clarify my POV. The US was willing to compromise the tempo of operations in order to let its firepower degrade the oposition to the point their own casualties would be minimal. The soviets believed in maintaining the tempo of a given operation, even if that meant assaulting positions before they had been fully reduced.
The soviets thought like chess players in that respect.
That's what I meant by fire+manouvre rather than fire before manouvre.
 
Let me clarify my POV. The US was willing to compromise the tempo of operations in order to let its firepower degrade the oposition to the point their own casualties would be minimal. The soviets believed in maintaining the tempo of a given operation, even if that meant assaulting positions before they had been fully reduced.
The soviets thought like chess players in that respect.
That's what I meant by fire+manouvre rather than fire before manouvre.

No, the Soviets were able to throw multiple army groups into an offensive intending if necessary to neglect an area where offensives failed and use their mobility to reinforce the areas where they succeeded. The Soviets also carried out their offensives in a somewhat different fashion than the Anglo-Americans in the last phase of the war. If nothing else the larger size of the Soviet and Nazi armies both means it's not a simple task to compare Bagration, Jhassy-Kishinev, Vistula-Oder, and Berlin to the Allies' war in the West. Budapest was for the East what Aachen was to the West, Berlin was for the East what the Siegfried Line was for the West.
 
I dont understand your problem with U.S tactics.

I see it as this.

Option A kill more opponents, lose more men, win the war.

Option B kill less opponents, lose less men, win the war.

War isint about bodycounts it's about winning, if anything commanders who complete the objective and lose less men are more useful than commanders that complete the objective and lose more men.
 
No, the Soviets were able to throw multiple army groups into an offensive intending if necessary to neglect an area where offensives failed and use their mobility to reinforce the areas where they succeeded. The Soviets also carried out their offensives in a somewhat different fashion than the Anglo-Americans in the last phase of the war. If nothing else the larger size of the Soviet and Nazi armies both means it's not a simple task to compare Bagration, Jhassy-Kishinev, Vistula-Oder, and Berlin to the Allies' war in the West. Budapest was for the East what Aachen was to the West, Berlin was for the East what the Siegfried Line was for the West.

That has nothing to do with what I was saying. On a tactical, not operational level, if a soviet unit had to get somewere in a given time, it would be willing to pay a much higher price for it than a US unit.
 
That has nothing to do with what I was saying. On a tactical, not operational level, if a soviet unit had to get somewere in a given time, it would be willing to pay a much higher price for it than a US unit.

The comments are that the Soviet unit had less option with this than a US unit, not that either made the choice voluntarily or particularly felt this was a desirable thing.
 
I dont understand your problem with U.S tactics.

I see it as this.

Option A kill more opponents, lose more men, win the war.

Option B kill less opponents, lose less men, win the war.

War isint about bodycounts it's about winning, if anything commanders who complete the objective and lose less men are more useful than commanders that complete the objective and lose more men.

Lety me give you an example.

Red force is pulling back to a prepared defensive line. Leaves a force to hold a retarding position to cover its retreat. Blue force must smash the covering force ASAP to catch the Red force on the move and destroy it. It calls on its firepower to soften the defences, but pushes forward using fire and manouvre, and taking casualties, or it pounds the covering force with lots of firepower untils its so degraded it can be brushed aside with minimal casualties, by wich time the bulk of Red force is in a strong position and ready to make the Blue force pay dearly for taking its time.
Trading lives for ground rarely pays, trading lives for speed sometimes does...
Operational tempo is critical in operations, and sometimes when you take it slow and careful you loose.
When you have the luxury of bombing you opponents for months before you can finish them in 100 hours it's nice, sometimes you can't afford the time...
 
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The comments are that the Soviet unit had less option with this than a US unit, not that either made the choice voluntarily or particularly felt this was a desirable thing.

Options are an expensive thing. When you're fighting in another continent, against people who never invaded your country nor bombed it, your economy is actualy improving with the war and your fire support assets table reads like this year's complete colection of Jane's you have a lot of options and use them.
 
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