"hopefully no one would have ever suggested fielding survivability-inferior but numerically-superior manned force as a viable strategic aim..."
Every wartime opponent of the USA for the last half century that we've lost to, has eventually won using that exact strategy. Its kind of expensive, but everyone who tries it, beats us eventually.
Re:A Cold War Legacy: The Decline of Stealth
by smacktoward on Tuesday January 20, 2015 @12:07PM
(#8917906)
Not to mention that both we and the Russians used it to beat the Germans rather handily in World War 2. It was well known that the M4 Sherman tank was a less survivable fighting platform than the German Tiger or Panther, for instance, but the Tiger was so complex to build that American industry could turn out more than ten Shermans for each Tiger the Germans built. One on one a Sherman had no chance against a Tiger, but against five or seven or ten Shermans even the Tiger would eventually be overwhelmed.
Re:A Cold War Legacy: The Decline of Stealth
by ethbro on Thursday January 22, 2015 @12:50PM
(#8930509)
Or, to phrase it another way, the Allied forces (and the Soviets) could afford to include this "extra" armor organically in lower-level formations. As opposed to the Germans who were forced to concentrate their relatively-scarce armor exclusively in mechanized formations.
Everyone always thinks about the consequences of the above as 5 Shermans (or T-34s) vs. 1 Tiger. But the more important distinction was likely 2 Shermans + infantry vs. 0 Panthers + infantry.
"In addition, a new generation of low cost, reusable, and ultimately disposable UNMANNED [emphasis added] systems can help invert the cost imposition of A2/AD networks by overwhelming an enemy’s ability to engage at favorable cost exchanges."
I'm curious as to whether you can conceivably build effective aerial platforms for cheaper than you can build missiles to knock them down, but I'd imagine you could do so with decoy drones.
I believe the unmanned part is key for enabling this -- hopefully no one would have ever suggested fielding survivability-inferior but numerically-superior manned force as a viable strategic aim...