Michael Fitzpatrick, PhD

When the Army decided in the 70s they could win a conventional war, the pendulum swings totally to civilian leadership being the first decider.

In the 60s nuclear fires were again separated from conventional and became essentially a toggle switch. You could start toggled off, but then flip the switch and go all in. Who got control of the switch was a tough one, Corps commanders *might* SACEUR *might* but the momentum was on the Prez's side

He was a big believer in the dinner-menu response to crises. Give the Prez a list of options and let him pick. That list could include 'Nuke the fuckers' or it could have non-military solutions, or mil but conventional.

Regardless he wanted to choose. He got that, and thats been the system since.

Wisely the Army decided pretty quickly that this was a dumb fucking idea, and as early as 1958/59 they looked to move on and reverse some of the changes. But the integration of nuclear fires with conventional was still around in 1961 and it made Kennedy furious.

It should be pretty plain, the core underpinning of Pentatomic is also that there is no real conception of a war outside of an atomic war in Europe with the Soviets. Pentatomic doesnt even really play nice in a hypothetical second Korean War (not that its designers cared).

Under the pentatomic structure there is no delegation of nuclear authority separate from conventional because there was no concept of nuclear fires separate from conventional. That was the point, to incorporate nuclear weapons on a fundamental level to make up for the Soviet's conventional edge

The ability to plan their own nuclear fires.

Little John was party of a battery of light rocket artillery which could be assigned to the battle group commander, while Davy Crockett was given over to company commanders in some Pentatomic battalion organizations. The idea being to nuclearize the Battlegroups and give battalion captains....

At the same time, the Army got clearance to begin work on a bunch of different systems, which they envisioned as tiers. Corps level, Division level, Battle Group level assets.

You have tubed nuclear artillery, with 11", 203/155mm, and the Davy Crockett. And Rocket, Corporal Honest John Little John

After the war the Army began to experiment with what it called the Pent-atomic Army. Divisions would lose their brigades and get five combat commands which would be demi-brigade sized task forces made up of an ad hoc selection of battalions organic to the division. Pick & mix style

During the Korean War, the infrastructure to produce nuclear weapons was significantly expanded such that by the mid 1950s there was enough fissile material to think about things other than V2 clones and gravity fall bombs.

During the Pentatomic era some nuclear weapons were put in the hands of *company* commanders. Wild shit.

For real tho in 1961 Kennedy wanted to try and use a brigade to reopen the highway to Berlin. He was told by SACEUR that if the convoy were fired upon they would HAVE to respond with nuclear weapons, and that (oopsie) authority had been pre delegated to divcoms in Europe

static.wikia.nocookie.net/kubrick/imag...

Tens of millions of people would have survived if the Japanese had held the Yalu line.

And a friendly reminder, the Japanese Empire began by setting the queen of Joseon Korea aflame while her husband sat in the next room. It was murder from the outset, there was never a 'good' Japanese empire.

They could have ended at any point before Aug 1945 and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

They didn't, because they feared losing the empire of corpses which had been built since the 1890s.

I will continue to point out that the bombings would have been unnecessary had Japan surrendered at any point. Despite their propaganda to the country, the war was not one of annihilation as they had fought in China and the Germans had fought in Russia.

A very good boy preparing to wax some Rebs

Wishbone knows exactly how to remember the cause of failed secessionists - “the worst for which people ever fought,” as US Grant said - with hot lead and cold steel.

Live from Texas:

Sorry, but just on that quote.

Dude works for trucking and warehousing (what, pray tell, are you warehousing) Voted in favor of tariffs. And then has the audacity to shocked pikachu?

Also a great one!

I think so. IMO the single two greatest determinants of battlefield success are energy and a willingness to actually accept battle. Obv both cant save you from being stupid, but the two most consistent characteristics of losers to me seems to be inactivity and a fear of the toss of the dice.

Guderian was not just some corps commander tho, he did do some pretty serious doctrine work pre-war. Like, you might as well call Patton just some corps commander (Patton created the first US tank forces from the ground up)

TBH the story of 1940 is as much a story about how badly the French sucked as how good the Germans were.

Pentagon policy chief calls S. Korea 'role model' for N. Korea deterrence, defense spending | Yonhap News Agency By Song Sang-ho WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 (Yonhap) -- A senior Pentagon official has described ...

Worst person you know and all that. Even Colby can be right twice a year....

But the larger question is, what has it bought SK?

en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN2025...

I’ve learned one law of history, dating all the way back to the era of the Emperors. You can only have one heir, your son.

The second the emperor names his preferred Eunnich, he plants the seeds of betrayal.

This Palmer article/speech pissed me off so much that I decided to scrap my original article. It’s entirely clear to me that defense VC scammers have literally no idea how war works or why why military technology evolves the way it does secretaryrofdefenserock.substack.com/subscribe?si...

This is the strongest counterpoint to all the “drone swarms are the present” people. The two armies currently locked in the closest thing to a near peer war are constantly trying to get more of the systems the drone people say are obsolete. They aren’t giving up on jets/arty/IFVs/tanks in the field.

Better than the M48s they were passing off as PzIIIs in Patton!

I actually kind of like all the vismod weird tanks in those old movies. Something modern war movies lost