Bush boldly going...

Hi!

(TKalbfus) writes:
Unless you do what the French did between the wars, and build a fixed
fortification to stop the German Army. We saw how useful that was.

The maginot line fortifications were built to save manpower since the
birth rate would give fewer possible soldiers around 1940 and to
hinder the German army to cross the maginot line into france where it
would be easiest for them to advance so that the mobile part of the
french army could beat them.

It was seen as a choise between lots of forces along the whole border
or much smaller fortified forces along the border and a much bigger
reserve behind the border. And they realy wanted to avoid being stuck
in primitive trenches again.

The maginot line worked as it was designed but the mobile part of the
french army failed to beat the germans.

Perhaps the regular mobil part of the french army would have succeeded
if the funds used to build the magiont line had been used on it. It
eased the manpower problem but made the funding problem worse. On the
other hand it has been said that there were no big problems with the
french quality and ammount of equipment but in their tactics and
communications.

This has little to do with spaceflight but space is the high ground
for recoinnance and communications. If other countries develop cheaper
ways of reaching orbit it makes it much easier for them to match the
US/Nato resources. That will be even worse if anti sattelite or space
to ground weapons are deployed in space since their tonnage can
escalate to be realy vast. Having easier and cheaper access to space
then other competing nations is thus important for USA.

But personally I hope that the space launch business in a decade or
two will be driven more by space tourism then military spending. Free
fall honeymoon hotels are a lot nicer then magazines of kinetic
killers.

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In article ,
Magnus Redin wrote:
The maginot line worked as it was designed...

The parts of it that were actually built, that is. The original concept,
as I understand it, covered the *whole* border. The idea of not covering
the Ardennes, on the theory that it was largely impassable anyway, was a
later economy measure.

...it has been said that there were no big problems with the
french quality and ammount of equipment but in their tactics and
communications.

Correct. It is beyond dispute, for example, that in spring 1940, the
French had more and better tanks than the Germans did. What they lacked
most was a high command which could use those forces effectively; the
problems with tactics and communications were only symptoms.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

(Henry Spencer) writes:

In article ,
Magnus Redin wrote:
The maginot line worked as it was designed...

The parts of it that were actually built, that is. The original concept,
as I understand it, covered the *whole* border. The idea of not covering
the Ardennes, on the theory that it was largely impassable anyway, was a
later economy measure.

...it has been said that there were no big problems with the
french quality and ammount of equipment but in their tactics and
communications.

Correct. It is beyond dispute, for example, that in spring 1940, the
French had more and better tanks than the Germans did.

I'd dispute that. The French tanks had bigger guns and thicker armor,
and no room for a dedicated tank commander and/or radio, and that made
them inferior to the German models.

More, yes. The French had numbers.


What they lacked most was a high command which could use those forces
effectively; the problems with tactics and communications were only
symptoms.

The problems weren't just at the level of the *high* command, but ran
down all the way through the system and were as noted above embedded
in the hardware.


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