Dude, who even knows.
Post reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 475 notes
Also to anyone complaining about countries devoting resources to this sub, the US maintains deep sea capabilities for reasons of state, which includes deep sea rescue capabilities mostly relating to the SLBM leg of the nuclear triad, this was a free practice scenario and like, enrichment for those guys.
Like Air Force SERE and search & rescue, a lot of this isn’t really justified in terms of per-incident return on investment, but by affecting combatants’ senses of the lethality of defeat it changes their payoff matrices in ways that minimize principal-agent problems.
Same as the Great Ghost Dance or General Butt Naked convincing warriors they had magical protection from the enemy, or Japanese, Christian, or Islamic ideas of death at war as an honor bringing afterlife rewards (with chaplains embedded with armies to reinforce the sense of protection against ultimate annihilation), or even a lot of the function of battlefield medics in an explosive age (from a government perspective a multiple amputee soldier is just as much a total loss as a dead one, and costs for ongoing care besides) – shifting some margin of your forces’ energies from self-protection to mission success is huge
Post with 9 notes
To reiterate the basic chain structure of power:
strength < skill < tactics < strategy < logistics < politics
Morale is a real if intangible thing; high morale will increase effectiveness (to a finite limit), low morale will decrease effectiveness (to a finite but negative limit).
There are five basic inputs that affect morale:
A wise leader will ensure these factors are provided regularly and at as high quality as practical.
If any are unprovided, forces will tend to autonomously scrounge them from fellows or extract them from surroundings. This sourcing will generally reduce logistic burden but increase political burden.