Re: [GZG] [DSII] Precision Strike

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx>]

Allan Goodall wrote:

>Oerjan, can you recommend any (non-classified) resources for use lay
>people to read about current military technology -- and, if possible,
>the advances in tactics for using them? Online resources would be
>wonderful, but books or periodicals would work, too.

I can't recommend any "one-stop shop" resource that'll give it all to you 
quickly. Books discussing military hardware and tactics are usually too far 
behind - by the time there's enough unclass info on real hardware and 
tactics that an author can write a coherent book about it, the info is 
usually obsolecent already... There are some interesting books which 
attempt to project trends into the future, but they tend to become 
inaccurate rather quickly when the trends don't develop in the direction 
predicted. (Reading such books 5-10 years after they were published can be 
quite amusing <g>)

Magazines are more up-to-date, but you have to piece the whole picture 
together from lots of little pieces. The various Jane's publications are 
full of gossip on the latest hardware developments and general trends; 
but  they are very light on tactics, and unless your local library has them 
they can be difficult to get hold of unless you have a lot of money to spare.

Military magazines like Armor Magazine 
(<http://www.knox.army.mil/center/ocoa/ArmorMag/index.htm>) and Military 
Review (<http://www.leavenworth.army.mil/milrev/English/index.htm>) have 
quite a lot of tactics discussions, though for some reason their free 
on-line archives tend to lag behind the printed versions <g>

If you have plenty of time and a good net connection, you can find lots of 
unclassified military Field Manuals on-line. The US Army ones can be found 
eg. at <https://134.11.61.26/CD6/Publications/DA/FM/ByPub.htm> (as well as 
in several other places). Unfortunately the manuals don't give any hard 
data on the capabilities of the latest equipment, and it can also be hard 
to figure out in which of the FMs you'll find what you're looking for - 
particularly if you don't already know what it is that  you *are* looking 
for <g>

Then there's the rest of the 'net... where you can find all the latest 
rumours, and also a lot of hard facts - the only problem is to figure out 
which is which! Here the best bet is to join a good military-topic 
discussion forum, and figure out which members know what they're talking 
about and which you should ignore.

My favourite forum for land warfare is TankNet (<www.tank-net.org>), where 
many of the members are ex- or serving soldiers from all around the world 
(including a bunch who currently are or recently have been in Iraq; some of 
them kept up running commentaries during their deployment there)... a bit 
like this mailing list, but with a larger proportion of soldiers. As always 
you won't get the whole picture in a single sitting, but at least you don't 
have to wade through too much false data or massive Field Manual tomes <g>

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx

"Life is like a sewer.
 What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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