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Comment by colanderman | Hacker News Reader

You can't exactly strategically deploy food.

You can certainly strategically fuck up your enemy's supply lines. War is one of the main causes of famine for this reason.

One of the ways they did what you describe is by placing these concrete walls around troubled enclaves. They weren't restricting food but munitions had to now be taken through checkpoints.

Food is one of the primary resources that is strategically deployed.

On a tactical level, mealie bags and biscuit boxes were famously used to defend a British outpost in the Zulu wars. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rorke%27s_Drift

Aren't strategic food supplies what keeps sieges from being a 4-week affair?

Then how you allocate and deploy food is a measure of where you could potentially resist a seige.

I dunno... North Korea might say differently.

yeah you can.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal,_Ready-to-Eat

i have no military experience but i'm guessing this is actually one of the easiest things to strategically deploy. a day's worth of ammo for a platoon probably weighs a few hundred pounds. a day's worth of food is probably like 10 pounds.

But: 1. in most wars the soldiers are actually fighting a very small proportion of the time. They are eating, drinking and creating waste every day. 2. Those dehydrated rations will need to be rehydrated. So you need to supply in the region of 3 litres of clean (soldiers are not as effective if they are sick) water each day (more in hot climates).

MREs aren't dehydrated. That's why they're called "ready to eat"; you just open the pouch and chow down.

in a forward operating base there are firefights every day.

see: restrepo, korengal films.

That's exactly what they did during the Berlin Airlift (Operation Vittles). Close to 9,000 tons per day of food and supplies by the end.

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