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Comment by nindalf | Hacker News Reader

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nindalf·

I was saying a commanders accuracy with a rifle isn’t relevant to their ability to decide tactics or strategy.

Nothing you’ve said contradicts what I said.

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But the commander hasn't tried a machine gun and thinks that a bayonet charge will still work like it did before.

Or, the commander thinks that in an age of drones and cruise missles, bayonet charges don't make sense even if the bayonet is now attached to a machine gun.

And then the commander goes all in on that strategy, enemies knock out communication networks / find a drone counter measure, and now enemies have a decided advantages because they kept bayonets on their machine guns.

Aren't soldiers typically issued submachine guns? (That's what SMG is short for, isn't it?)

I think they might have been going for the ludicrous image of sticking a bayonette onto the front of a fixed gun emplacement.

Don't you have that the wrong way round? In this tweet, Russinovich is arguing for the newer thing, not the older thing. The comparison would be the commander saying use a machine gun and consider bayonets obsolete, and the commenters who haven't used a machine gun are saying "he hasn't enough experience with modern bayonetting to say that, modern bayonettes wielded by sufficiently competent bayonetters are as good as any machine gun".

And then other critics saying "Russinovich hasn't demonstrated skill with a machine gun so how can he say bayonettes are obsolete?"

It’s relevant. It’s harder to accept and follow a leader that can’t aim and shoot.

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