A common sight out in the country can seem counter-intuitive at first: a large bird, maybe a turkey vulture or even an eagle or hawk, being driven away from an area by one or more much smaller birds. Why doesn’t the much larger and stronger bird just crush the small sparrow or whatever that is attacking it?
The larger bird certainly would if the sparrow or what have you would simply fly straight at it but of course that is not what they do. The small, quicker bird dives around, zipping in to harass the larger bird and then darting away before the more ponderous bird can change directions. The end result is a bird that is 20 or more times the size flying away in defeat with tiny birds in hot pursuit.
How does this happen? Simply put, smaller birds instinctively know not to fight a larger bird on his terms.
Thanks to mass media, the average person still thinks of war in the framework of the World Wars, giant set piece battles with two large opposing armies slamming into each other. Despite Vietnam followed by the disaster in Afghanistan and also the gritty small scale fighting that often occurred in World War II, war still is thought of in those terms. Massed firepower is the name of the game.
Unfortunately for America, depending on how you look at it I guess, our opponents in wars since the Korean armistice in July of 1953 have for the most part politely declined to line up and let us shoot them with tanks and artillery. Maybe in the Gulf Wars for a brief time but then they changed into something much different.
A term that is bandied about is “asymmetric warfare”, defined as:
:warfare that is between opposing forces which differ greatly in military power and that typically involves the use of unconventional weapons and tactics (such as those associated with guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/asymmetric%20warfare
Thanks to being relatively untouched by the devastation of World War II, America came into the second half of the 20th century as the undisputed technological and industrial powerhouse of the world. Other than the Soviets, no one could put as many tanks, artillery, planes and warships on the field of battle as we could. Since a war with the Soviets would have left everyone dead, the USSR and USA spent the Cold War backing opposing side in various conflicts in places like Vietnam and Angola. In two major conflicts where the Cold War belligerents tried to use conventional tactics in an asymmetric conflict, Vietnam for the U.S. and Afghanistan for the Soviets, the resulting quagmire was devastating. The enormous losses of Vietnam were incredibly demoralizing for the American people, so sure of our military superiority, and Afghanistan arguably is one of the factors that led to the end of the Soviet Union.
Your average Taliban or Viet Cong wasn’t all that bright but they know how to fight and were unhampered by quaint notions like rules of warfare or avoiding casualties. They could hide among civilians giving their larger foe only a couple of choices: either avoid attacking to prevent civilian casualties or attack anyway and kill off women and children. As coach Red Saunders famously said, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”. Winners win and loser lose. Do you know the other name for a gracious loser? Loser.
There are ample contemporary examples, perhaps nowhere more clear than the Hamas-Israel conflict. Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip was ostensibly kicked off by the October 7th attacks by Hamas. We are learning now that the story is far more complicated, with the Jerusalem Post recently released a story with a damning title: IDF knew of Hamas’s plan to kidnap 250 before October 7 attack – report. Weeks before the attack, the IDF knew it was coming. The Jerusalem Post chalks up the inaction to hubris and incompetence but I suspect it was more to do with the IDF being ordered to let it happen and to stand down while it was happening. They believed that the attacks would give Israel the cover it wanted in order to level and depopulate the Gaza strip.
While normies don’t seem to understand what happened, thinking Hamas miscalculated the Israeli response, I believe that Hamas knew exactly what was going to happen. For both sides in the conflict, the Israelis on one side and Hamas on the other, the people living in Gaza are not really relevant. The attacks by Hamas were significant enough to demand a response from Israel and to provide political cover for the response in America. Israel doesn’t care about the opinions of other nations as long as U.S. politicians are firmly under their control. With a veto on the UN Security Council, the U.S. has long prevented Israel from being held to account for her actions and that continues even today.
While I suspect that many of the videos of IDF soldiers “discovering” hidden caches of weapons in hospitals and children’s bedrooms are clumsily staged for American viewers, some likely are legit. Either way, the IDF is doing exactly what Hamas wanted them to do: wholesale slaughter and displacement of people that have nothing to do with Hamas, and all in front of the cameras. Many don’t realize it because they only watch Fox News and normiecon Conservative Inc. outlets but the world has turned on Israel. Other than America, Israel has virtually no friends left in the world.
Nearby there is another quiet example of asymmetric warfare, the shipping interdiction by the Houthis. Just the other day they sank a cargo ship using a remote controlled “drone” boat packed with explosives: Crew Abandons Sinking Bulk Carrier In Red Sea After Kamikaze Drone Boat Attack. The vessel was the “Tutor” and while I have no idea what the value of that vessel was or the cargo it carried, I am confident it was many times more valuable than the suicide drone boat used to sink it. The actual cost inflicted is one factor but the larger factor is that making it more difficult to traverse those waters means companies will go around instead, adding a significant cost to shipping. It is a force multiplier, turning a relatively simple and inexpensive drone boat into a means of interdicting global shipping.
U.S. forces are claiming to have stopped several of these drone boats but at what cost, not just the actual munitions expended but also the cost of keeping U.S. forces in the area as part of the failing “Operation Prosperity Guardian”. The operation has been spearheaded by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, but she has been recalled and is being replaced by the Theodore Roosevelt, meaning the Roosevelt has to leave South Korea where it has been showing the flag amid escalating tensions between South and North Korea (See: US Withdraws Aircraft Carrier Eisenhower From Red Sea Amid Stepped-Up Houthi Attacks). Using the $4.5 billion (in 2007 dollars, around $7 billion in 2024 dollars) USS Theodore Roosevelt to stop suicide drone boats is like using a flammenwerfer to kill a mosquito. If the Roosevelt is in the Red Sea, it is not position to respond to China attacking Taiwan or North Korea attacking the South. America is stretched awfully thin around the world while doing our best to provoke conflicts.
While the U.S. continues to rely on “shock and awe” overwhelming force and whiz-bang gadgets, the world of warfare has continued to change for decades. While U.S. weapons still have their moments in the sun in Ukraine, like a U.S. made cluster bombing of people frolicking on a beach guided in by U.S. assets to kill civilians, the Russians are using far less expensive means to gradually grind the Ukrainian defense into the mud. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has introduced the world to a new style of warfare that relies heavily on small, cheap and disposable suicide drones instead of much larger and more expensive Predator and Reaper drones. An MQ-9 Reaper drone costs more than $50 million dollars, is almost 5000 pounds and has a wingspan of 66 feet. Sure you don’t want to be on the receiving end of a Hellfire missile launched from one but that is not a cheap piece of equipment and many are “piloted” by airmen sitting at a desk at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. Meanwhile Russians use cheap little drones that you could buy from Temu, packed with explosives. It seems almost unsporting to see multi-million dollar tanks and armored vehicles being blown up by crappy drones but that is the new world of warfare.
It may seem odd to consider Russian tactics as a sort of asymmetric warfare but keep in mind that Russia’s military budget is around 10% of the U.S. military budget. Without the indirect and increasingly direct assistance of the U.S., Ukraine would have capitulated early on and without the promises of aid it is likely that a negotiated settlement would have avoided the war in the first place. Now years later Ukraine has been devastated, Russia has a large combat experienced military that is adapting to war in the 2020s and the U.S. is still chasing the White supremacist phantom menace in her military and replacing White fighting men with fat transvestites.
That brings me back to the quickly deteriorating situation in the homeland. The current face of the globohomo junta, Pedo Joe Biden, often declares that anyone not down with the program will need to have F-15s and nukes to “take on” the government. That a man installed as President by the ruling elites would be so openly aroused at the notion of dropping bombs on his political opponents would be outrageous in a civilized country. We no longer live in one so he can creepily whisper that sort of stuff and fantasize about the mass murder of Americans with impunity.
I am not the first nor will I be the last to point out that our vaunted high tech, shock-and-awe weapons lost and lost badly to 65 IQ goat-humpers in Afghanistan using 50 year old Soviet era weapons. That was in a situation where our forces were thousands of miles from home. Here in America? Those drone pilots at Creech, well they have to leave their air conditioned offices sometime. They have families. So if they start hitting civilians with Hellfire missiles…..well, you can fill in the blanks.
Should something approximating a second Civil War happen in America, it won’t be guys in Hawaiian shirts with MAGA hats reenacting Pickett’s Charge where the military can mow them down, assuming that the actual combat forces of the military would fire on their fellow Americans in the first place (which is why there is a push to rid the military of White guys in favor of lunatic trannies, minorities and illegal aliens, all of whom would have no problem shooting civilians). With tens of millions of military veterans in America do you think that maybe a few of them, already pissed at being lied to by Uncle Sam, might have some basic understanding of guerilla tactics and asymmetric warfare concepts?
Those Americans Pedo Joe is so eager to start bombing are not carrying a first generation AK-47. I liked this post from Sons of Liberty GunWorks
Founder of SOLGW, Mike Mihalski, added in a comment:
That might be a slight exaggeration but not much of one. Around 10 million people in America hunt deer every year and most of them might not be competition shooters but can at least put a round more or less on target at least out to a couple hundred yards. You can put together a rifle set-up to shoot at least 500 yards reliably for not all that much money.
The point being, a trillion dollar military that is centered around aircraft carriers, hundred million dollar jets and high tech gadgets isn’t equipped for warfare in the 2020s, not against a peer adversary like Russia or China much less guerilla insurgents in far away lands. Against Americans who live next door to those drone operators? Centuries of history demonstrate that peaceable, nice neighbors can turn ugly in a hurry with proper motivation. Bosnia. Rwanda. Northern Ireland. People will go along to get along until they won’t.
The days of two armies lining up to shoot at each other with the one having more firepower winning are long in the past. Apparently They haven’t figured that out yet.
The modern minuteman stands ready always.
signed
The Raging Patriot
Pray “they” figure it out before the war of Sunshines.
One thing that is worth noting in applied asymmetric warfare is that the asymmetry is not merely in weapons and tactics but rather closer to what amounts to a total orientation of daily life reflecting their ethnic, cultural, and religious tradition.
While some modern civwar or insurgent type warfare has involved fracturing civil footing that is of comparable socio economic characteristics, at least in the beginning, asymmetric war is a function of two very different ways of life being reflected in the terms and modalities of conflict.
The empires who are defeated by the underdogs are not merely attrited in terms of man and material and public opinion back home, though those are factors, but rather that the belligerent underdogs live warfare as a defining feature of their daily lives and so the prosecution of their war capabilities is already congruent with much of how their lives and societies are organized.
They are already accustomed to living subsistence level lives of hard daily work to procure the basics, primitive shelter and minimal comforts. Even war itself. Vietnam had been in war for two generations before Uncle Sam showed up. Afghanistan same.
Living nomadic lives or in caves or tunnels or just in the bush as a normal way of being have a substantial advantage beyond the scope of warfare.
This is where any meditation on FUSA insurgency falls apart. Necessity is a supreme motivator and things change quickly but there is a substantial array of conditions and circumstances that render flyover Joe dissident well to the left of the learning curve of insurgent/asymmetric life that underpins warfare against an occupying empire.
Of course Americans are innovators and we will likely find our own sort of asymmetry, but the appetite for discomfort will have to precede the appetite for destruction of our enemies. No small feat. Covid and its ample cloverleafs back into the comfy matrix was not a good sign of temperament.
The counterinsurgent has to win.
The insurgent just has to not lose.
>Should something approximating a second Civil War happen in America, it won’t be guys in Hawaiian shirts with MAGA hats reenacting Pickett’s Charge where the military can mow them down
That was what I was thinking about, how so many are dismissive because they can only comprehend CW2 with the context of CW1, state by state and army by army. It’s been discussed many times beforehand both through real-world events and a few fictional takes like Harold Covington, though different people have different takes, of course, with some still blindly civnat and others more down-to-earth.
I wouldn’t trust a single soldier still in after all the purges of various sorts, not even leaving because of the jabs much less the decades of anti-White Male bullshit. Same goes for cops.
Bandit Country is an interesting book on The Troubles and how parts of the IRA worked at the time in South Armagh. It was clannish, with families that have been through this for generations, deep roots in the area too. Plenty of other books worth looking at too; the technology and demographics may be different but there is a lot of good info.
You can draw a straight line from “clinging to their God and their guns” to “deplorables” to “you need F-15s and nukes.” The next installment in that series is direct threats. Once the “leaders” start seeing the citizens as the “other,” it’s all over.
There’s another lesson from Vietnam (and many other wars) besides assymetry. You mentioned the GAE’s “enormous” losses there, but they were nothing compared to Vietnamese casualties. The lesson is the side that’s willing to bleed for it, willing to pay any price, is more likely to win.
Re: Affy.
Yep. 50+ year old AKs/RPGs and in MANY cases Lee Enfield .303 MK1 Mod 2-3-4’s I OH SO wanted to find a SMLE as a ‘bring back’ but they were hard to come by. Also Rolling Block 1800’s Martini-Henrys, although whether or not they were functional is another question.
The famed market(s) in the Khyber Pass can literally make, from hand ANY sort of weapon your heart desires, as long as your wallet allows it.
It was funny seeing Khyber AK’s stamped “Made in 1877” that GI’s tried to bring home.
Technically it would be CW1 not 2. A civil war is two (or more) sides fighting for control of the government. So called CW1 was a war of succession, effectively between separate countries over the Constitutional right of State sovereignty. The North (aka Supreme Central Gov) won and the South, where most of those white military veterans come from, hasn’t forgotten.
Sure, they can (and will) replace all the competent, loyal White boys with illegal aliens, trannies, convicted criminals facing prison time or the army and whatever other dregs can be dredged up. But they will never be a cohesive fighting force, no “band of brothers”. The freaks and misfits that the military is actively recruiting can’t even get along with one another. Sure, they may shoot at civilians when the grizzled, old White guy in command says ‘shoot’. But as soon as they are shot back at, just watch them ditch their weapons and run for their lives. This will be doubly true for non-volunteers called up in a draft.
Even if the army was still composed mainly of competent, loyal, southern White boys, could they really be coerced into shooting and killing other White people? Maybe remotely, via drone. But the resistance will not be massed somewhere, just waiting to be attacked. We are going to be everywhere and nowhere, in tiny cells of 2, 3, 5 guys who know their terrain better than any remote drone operator. Most with years of recreational shooting experience, and years of pent-up rage for what the evil empire has done to our beloved country.
I struggle to bring to mind an example of a military that refused orders to turn on its own citizens, no matter what color the troops and citizens were.
JZ – “Bonus Army”. The Army used Tanks and Machine Guns to attack a Protester’s Encampment in washington, district of criminals, peaceably assembled to demand that the Congress make good on promises of Veteran’s Benefits (from WWI ). No apes or troons in that ‘army’, just White Men. So take it as a Given that Any and All ‘soldiers’ in the Zionist Occupation government’s military WILL Shoot, Bomb, Drone any Citizens they are Ordered to.
The only people killed during the Bonus Army fiasco were two people killed by Washington Metro Police.
I love how everybody today questions everything the government tells them but never question the story concerning the Bonus Army. Here’s a tip, everything you think you know about it tis a lie.
The Bonus Army leadership had been hijacked by the communist. Their plan was to use those “useful idiots” to start a communist revolution in the U.S. One of the organizers wrote a book about it is the late 40’s and admitted it. Another one testified before Congress and admitted it.
Keep believing the lie told to you be communist so you can still spew communist lies about it.
Go into the void. Avoid strength. Attack weakness. Sun Tzu. Make your plans as dark as night, and when you strike, strike like a Thunderbolt. Also Sun Tzu.
We may have use the same tactics as the Viet Cong, the Talliban. There are plenty of examples in history to use. Quintus Fabius Maximus, the Swamp Fox, Daniel Morgan, Nathan Beford Forrest, and others.
Was talking with a boomer couple in line at the gas station because no one knows how to keep the receipt paper filled at the pumps and was chatting about Trump and the election and I told them I don’t think there is going to be one that I think we are going to see some kind of unrest/uprising before then and to my surprise they agreed and said if it happens they will be taking care of a couple of their commie neighbors and I just laughed and laughed…It’s a powder keg waiting to blow…Got Tribe…
Lmao the people you meet at Town Pump.
Actually this was way south…
Internal Satanic (he is real) communists hate God, family, religion.
Hairgel Pelosi (Gavin Newsome) recently went off on Louisiana over the 10 commandments back in the public square.
These soft fruity bottom dreg minions of Satan’s barrel will outsource to the blue helmets or the indispensable newcomers.
Some replacements in the subdivision sector are directly funded by Uncle Sugar as the cars never move except on first of the month when the EBT card charges up.
Batthouse Barry the immaculate glory hole server messiah Fundamentally Transformed any areas that are too white.
Only a demoralized society would allow in entire Trojan horse armies and ignore it like this is fine.
I do not know how think a second Civil War will turn out to be. It will not be two armies fighting out in an orderly way. It e closer to the former Yugoslavia during the breakup in the 1990’s, Northern Ireland, the recent Syrian Civil War, or Spain during the 1930’s, or any so-called People’s War Liberation.
a)
“…the world…turned on Israel. Other than America, Israel has…no friends…”.
Other than those American politicians benefitting from their foreign-aid skim-scam, zionists are alone and out-numbered millions-to-one.
.
The instant American tax-payers say ‘NO!’ to any more foreign-aid skim-scam, the instant Americans noose-n-drop a few hundred traitorous politicians, zionists cease to exist.
.
.
b)
Somebody brighter than me said:
* “If it cannot continue, it won’t.”
.
LargeMarge says:
* “The American military is stuck in 1938, prepping for The Great War Of 1914.”
.
A multi-billion fedbux ship — irreplaceable, costing several million fedbux to operate daily — compared to a couple teen-agers fussing around in the garage?
My bet is on the hobby folks.
.
Especially if the hobby folks are Americans, innovative and hankering for our return to LEAVE IT TO BEAVER and AMERICAN GRAFFITI.
Multiply that by a few thousand garages.
Add in a grudge or two, and we have the makings of an interesting weekend.
Two books about Afghanistan and the Soviets are these – one from the Russian viewpoint, the other from the Taliban/Mujahideen :
The Bear Went Over The Mountain [Soviet Combat Tactics In Afghanistan]
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-PQolYxC42sbf7iy4
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War
https://archive.org/details/othersidemountainmuj
Both are … interesting.
I used to have signed copies from Les Grau. Met him at KU when he gave a talk.
Thunder Valley Precision here in Ohio has a wonderful range and offer classes and competitive shooting. Place has been very busy everytime I’ve gone there to shoot. For a less tnan a $1000 you can build yourself a 1000 yard rifle. As money becomes available you can upgrade if you wish.
“You mentioned the GAE’s “enormous” losses there, but they were nothing compared to Vietnamese casualties. The lesson is the side that’s willing to bleed for it, willing to pay any price, is more likely to win.”
This reminds me of : Col. Harry G. Summers Jr. begins his book, On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context, by relaying the following conversation: “‘You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,’ said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. ‘That may be so,’ he replied, ‘but it is also irrelevant.’”
What this tells me is that the current military leaders of AINO are idiots. They have not learned anything from history. Your typical M1A1 Abrams fanboy boy is gonna speak about how awesome his tank is. Except #1, it isn’t that great in the drone-centric battlefields of Ukraine and #2, tactical success is meaningless in the face of an enemy that it in it for the fight.
The million dollar question, then, is whether normiecon has it in his belly to endure the privations and hardships that would be required to win. Or as pointed out above, not lose.
For myself, I am pretty hopeful. The AINO government pays more in interest than on defense. This is will continue until the AINO defaults somehow. That is probably why China is getting rid of AINO debt it holds. There are more immigrant invaders than the system can handle. I would bet that many, if not most of them are not working. Sooner or later the NGO $$ well is gonna go dry.
I am not super worried about nuclear war. First, I don’t think if it happens, it will be a massive free for all. I don’t think Putin would target any more that he would have to to win or make his point. I am also pretty confident in the incompetence of American forces and equipment. When is the last time they tested an ICBM out of a boomer sub? I just saw an article that the Air Force cannot have 24/7 assets available. Also, I think Russia could defeat a number of incoming missiles with their air defense. So yeah, DC, New York, and Los Angeles might get nuked. I don’t care. That just makes me want to vote for Putin for President.
If we don’t have a sunshine war, all those disgruntled vets are gonna know what to do. We have already discussed in these pages how vulnerable certain infrastructure are….cough….electric-substations…cough. When the lights start going out, even Normie will have to take notice and will be made to decide on which side of the fence he sits.
Yea we are seeing in Ukraine how vulnerable stations and generation is to drone attacks and big transformers take at least 2 years to build in peacetime operations they will be in
unattainable in wartime situations…Thermite and oil create chaos…
Russia sucks at building good stuff – I believe Stalin didn’t put seat pads in the T-34 because they only lasted two minutes in combat against a Panzer. They built a lot of stuff. We, OTOH, build a lot of really big and perfect things that are vulnerable to . . . . drones. Missiles. Cheap stuff (in comparison).