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Comment by jgable | Hacker News Reader

A bit OT: does anyone have recommendations for textbooks or other resources that teach basic military strategy and tactics? Whenever any military discussion comes up that even touches technical aspects, I feel pretty lost. Similar to how with certain sports, I just can't see the movement patterns or how the plays develop.

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USMC MCDP 1, Warfighting, is a good read.[1] It's a bit philosophical, but far less so than Sun Tzu or Clausewitz.

For small-unit tactics, read the classic The Defense of Duffer's Drift to get a sense of the problem.[2] Then read some of the military how-to manuals.

Armchair generals talk strategy. Real generals talk logistics. Logistics cannot win wars, but it can easily lose them. If the troops at the sharp end run out of fuel, food, or ammo, they're dead. Eisenhower was a logistics guy. Gen. Gus Patronis's "Moving Mountains" describes the logistics for the Gulf War.

Overall American strategy from WWII has been 1) accumulate huge resources 2) hammer. This worked in WWII, failed in Vietnam, worked in the Gulf War, worked in the Iraq invasion, and failed in the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan. How to win today's diffused wars is much discussed in the military; there are endless papers in Parameters, the Army War College journal. There's no center to obliterate for victory. No way to force a decision.

Korea is a classic heavy force-on-force situation. If that happens, it will look like WWII, not Afghanistan. Massive casualties and flattened cities.

[1] http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Publications/MCDP%201%20Wa... [2] https://ia801000.us.archive.org/29/items/FMFRP1233TheDefense...

I guess everybody's supposed to read Clausewitz and play wargames. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_War http://www.consimworld.com/

A more accessible wargame simulator would be the recently released Hearts of Iron IV(http://store.steampowered.com/app/394360/), a very realistic WW2-era military grand strategy game. Playing a game or two and you will quickly realize how shallow basic analysis and games such as Civilization, in terms of warfighting, are.

Tom Clancy's old books (not the garbage that used his name recently). Start with Red Storm Rising and then go through the Jack Ryan series beginning with The Hunt For Red October. You'll find his political views slightly odd if you're younger, but his military knowledge is unparalleled.

Edit: for the HN crowd especially, his detailed descriptions of weapon systems and politics are pretty amazing. You can argue he predicted the Russian annexation of Crimea among other things.

His description of everything was, well, detailed, as I remember a credit card scene that had some length to it. Red Storm Rising[1] was effectively co-written with Larry Bond who is the game designer behind Harpoon. He has written his own books with one being Red Phoenix dealing with a Korean conflict.

> You'll find his political views slightly odd if you're younger

not so much with a lot of surveys dealing with conservatives and youth

1) It should be noted that Red Storm Rising occurred before the F-117 was actually revealed so the book has a description of the rumored F-19 in the chapter "The Frisbees of Dreamland" but the tactics were what was written about (kill other sides AWACS). Bill Sweetnam had some alternate views.

This link https://www.usni.org/naval-institute-press/reading-lists has links to the US service branches reading lists - lot of leadership books but also strategy, tactics, and logistics books.

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