It Ain't Necessarily So
With Prostrations To The Brothers Gershwin
The things that you’re liable to read in your bible — The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, The Los Angeles Times — it ain’t necessarily so.
Oligarchic degenerates conduct offensive war against USA, Germany, and Russia under color of defensive war on behalf of so-called Ukraine, freedom and democracy, our values, the rules-based international order . . . blah, blah, blah. This is weaponized empathy, aggressive messianic collectivism, and evil incompetence interlaced in a most unappealing clot.
The devil’s stock in trade is distorting something that is good. Nothing is inherently bad. Everything is inherently good. The devil does not bring bad. He cannot because there is none to bring.
The devil brings distorted good. The devil is distorted good. Distorted good is harder to recognize and avoid and far more terrible and terrifying than bad would be, were there such a thing. The devil, as The Immortal Bard hath put it, can assume a pleasing shape. Mark the temptations of Jesus: they are not for bad things but for distorted good.
Human history may be taken as a progressive and sometimes revolutionary obsoleting of one weapon system by another. The movement, widely discerned, is toward increased speed, range, maneuverability, surprise, and lethality. Artillery leads the way.
All other human pursuits are secondary to the pursuit of war. Heraclitus: War is the father of all things. Without war, there is no progress, no expansion, and without progress, there is no happiness. Conflict resolved one way or the other is the cause of expansion, which is the substance of contentment and joy.
Artillery is the means of closing with an enemy, of getting at him before he can get at you. This translates to maximizing hurt on him and minimizing hurt on yourself. Therefore, throughout human history, weapons development emphasizes striking at a distance. This means artillery.
The constants of human history are (1) the geometry of battle, (2) the presence of warriors and their surprises, and (3) the construction and destruction of war itself. (See also von Clausewitz’s Trinity of Warfare.) The variables of human history are (1) weaponry, (2) intellect, and (3) will.
War is caused by desire for one or more of three things: wealth, dominion, women. War occurs because of those desires and one other: self-preservation. Self-defense does not cause war, however, it engages in war.
Artillery is the King of Battle. Infantry is the Queen of Battle. King needs Queen, Queen needs King. When they work together intelligently and with resolute will to win, they rule their realm.
Long-range, unopposable, precision artillery is enabled by the earth-over electronic envelope. Electricity already itself is fire and light. Remove a person or country from the electronic envelope, they go cold and dark. Plug them back in, they get warm and lit.
Artillery in the earth-over electronic envelope has at least two uses:
collapse regions of an enemy’s electrical grid without also destroying their wealth, real estate, and women, OR, for more persuasion, remove an enemy altogether, at least temporarily, from the earth-over electronic envelope, and
present the credible successor to MAD doctrine, thus occasioning unimpeachable justification for honest and thorough decommissioning and de-manufacture of nuclear weapons, AND, commence reconfiguration — with commensurate budget impacts — of the great powers’ standing military formations towards Joint Force sufficiency in homeland defense with rapid expandability in case of need for a punitive expedition overseas. (See also The Victory Plan of 1941. Exposition and commentary on the same are here.)
Long-range, unopposable, precision artillery makes unappealing the complexion of and nullifies occasions for offensive war. It causes offensive war to approach the point of zero-to-negative ROI even without going nuclear. In nuclear artillery war, you know going in that you do not have to deal with its aftermath. In hypersonic artillery war, you know going in that you will have to be miserable, perhaps for a long time, in its aftermath. Hypersonic artillery is the first weapon in human history that de-incentivizes war and perhaps strategic weapons development as well.
General Mac Arthur called USAAF bombers forward artillery. His plan in SWPA contemplated maneuvering ground and naval forces behind the bomber line and against the Joint Force military capacity of Imperial Japan.
The outcome of war depends firstly on sufficiency, ranging, speed, rate of fire, and accuracy of distancing weapons: artillery.
What will pumping Europe with American nuclear weapons lead to?
Accurate strategic and theatre hypersonic artillery in sufficient salvo guided by ISR-driven targeting has brought war itself to a condition our ancestors did not have to contemplate: the condition of artillery making war itself meaningless.
It was said years ago that nuclear weapons made war obsolete. That was true insofar as a post-nuclear exchange would go: no one would be left to wage war or likely want to.
Today is different. Today, war with sub-nuclear weapons has made war not obsolete — many are left alive after all — but meaningless: what have you won, really, when you make everyone miserable just so you can seize and own their land and wealth and summon for your pleasure and then discard their boys and women, but everyone hates you?
Sub-nuclear artillery can make an entire country desperate without killing hardly anyone or destroying hardly anything. Ground force assaults on foreign soil are unnecessary in principle although they remain germane in certain conditions.
The enemy nation or region can be anywhere on the surface of the globe, or under it. It just goes dark in a matter of minutes, and it does not recover for days, weeks, months, years, or ever, depending on the will of someone who wants to put the country back together again.
There are people capable of murder. There are people capable of suicide. Both of these retain a core of reason inside them based on their sense of self. At least diplomatic relations are possible and usually desirable with such as these.
There are also people capable of murder and suicide. These have no sense of self. Even diplomatic relations are of no use with such as these. When such seize political power — Hitler, Zelensky, drugged-up Sicarii descendants populating US GOs and NGOs — their exit is fierce on all concerned yet to an all-around relief among survivors. Of all men, a murder-suicide is the most accursed.
Military faculties and staffs were well-advised to assess effects and needs of any-time, any-where, unopposable artillery fire — sub-nuclear —and what that portends for Joint Force missions and TOEs as well as national strategic, theatre strategic, operational, and tactical combat rationales and doctrines altogether. US DOD need a TRADOC for The US Joint Force.
