Bad ideas in military history

[dudalb]

1. The US Army going to the gray ACU uniforms, and the US Navy's blue berry uniforms. Totally unnecessary, and in the case of the Army, the gray uniforms got guys killed.

2. Operation Iraqi Freedom. Total miscalculation, waste of lives and resources. Destroyed US credibility. The sad thing is Saddam would have either eventually given the world a reason to invade, or there is a good chance he would have been Arab-Springed.

3. Ham & Olive Loaf MREs. War crime in peace time.

4. COP Keating, Afghanistan. Everyone involved with the establishment of this outpost in that location should have been courtsmarshalled, and shot.

5. Operation Anaconda, 2002. Poorly conceived and planned. The US Army made the same mistakes the Soviets did in that same area, but with the knowledge that the Soviets blew it. We did the exact same thing. Only our precision weapons made the difference. Better planning, and less interference from SecDef Rumsfeld might - MIGHT - have resulted in the capture or killing of Bin Laden at Tora Bora, and saved us 19 years, thousands of lives, and billions of dollars.

Tho Ham and Olive loaf MRE were bad, but the Pork Patties were even worse
It seems like every generation of US soliders has a really bad field ration to endure. In Vietnam, it was Ham and Lima Beans. The soldiers showed how much they liked it by calling it Han and Motherf*****s

 

[Doubt]

Tho Ham and Olive loaf MRE were bad, but the Pork Patties were even worse
It seems like every generation of US soliders has a really bad field ration to endure. In Vietnam, it was Ham and Lima Beans. The soldiers showed how much they liked it by calling it Han and Motherf*****s

Ham and Olive loaf were after my time. Dehydrated pork patties, beef patties, and potatoes were all in the first issued versions of MREs. They were the finest tasting cardboard ever created by humans. But they did see the introduction of Tabasco sauce in the packages.

That said, the MRE was still a good idea overall. Less weight and overall better cold than a cold C-ration.

 

[LongFuzzy]

My son at NNPTC was in the path of hurricane IAN for a while. They closed the galley and issued 'MREs'. He said "They are like imitation MREs. And the MREs are not good. Reports say that they give you explosive diarrhea."

 

[bigred]

Some mistakes are of the sort that get repeated.

Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2003: "We will be welcomed as saviors and the invasion will pay for itself!"

Putin/Shoigu/Gerasimov on Ukraine in 2022: "We will be welcomed as saviors and the invasion will pay for itself!"

The difference is that Bush and co. actually believed it. I think.

I'll add:

- The F-104. A classic case of the old sports cliche "stats are for losers." (Of course you could add others like the F-102 and the trendy pick is the F-35 but debatable)
- The Alamo.
- The idea that we could install a sustainable democracy in the Middle East.
- Hitler not taking advantage of Dunkirk.
- Germany not taking long-range bombers seriously.

 

[lobosrul5]

The difference is that Bush and co. actually believed it. I think.

I'll add:

- The F-104. A classic case of the old sports cliche "stats are for losers." (Of course you could add others like the F-102 and the trendy pick is the F-35 but debatable)
- The Alamo.
- The idea that we could install a sustainable democracy in the Middle East.
- Hitler not taking advantage of Dunkirk.
- Germany not taking long-range bombers seriously.

Dunkirk: likely a lie that von Rundstedt came up with to save face.
Alamo: what do you mean by that? If blunder by Santa Anna, maybe. If by the Texians*... no.

*SIC

 

[HansMustermann]

Yeah, I don't think the German Army actually could crush the Dunkirk pocket. It really needed to wait for reinforcements, supplies, and repairs. People tend to underestimate how much and how early Germany ignored logistics and found itself reaching the end of the chain like the dog in Foghorn Leghorn cartoons.

Also I've argued before that if they somehow could prevent the Brits from evacuating (which, again, they couldn't, but just for hypothetical mental exercise sake,) they'd essentially just activate this condition for them:

Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve. Officers and men alike will put forth their uttermost strength.
-- Sun Tzu, "The Art Of War"​

Seriously, especially when it comes to Brits, those just don't give up easily. As Hitler was about to find out in the Battle Of Britain too.

 

[theprestige]

Dunno if this was a bad idea or a legitimate case of "we won't know one way or the other unless we actually try it", but in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the US decided to test the heavy air defenses around Baghdad with the largest F-16 sortie in history - 75 planes total. The sortie was a complete failure. No targets were hit. Miraculously only two of the attacking planes were shot down (both pilots survived). Before the test, only stealth planes and cruise missiles were being used on those targets. After the test, the US opted to continue only using stealth planes and cruise missiles on those targets.

Apparently part of the problem was bad OPSEC, so the defenders knew the sortie was coming and were well prepared. Also, in the early 90s the US lacked the battle management tools necessary to coordinate that many planes all at once. This exacerbated the difficulties they had refueling, and caused the air group to string out and trickle into the target area instead of properly saturating the defenses. Also the Iraqis had more radars than the escort jammers could suppress.

My general view is that everyone makes mistakes in war. I feel like, as long as you're making interesting mistakes, and learning from them, they're not necessarily bad ideas. This wasn't Russian vehicles rolling around the countryside without infantry screens, like we're seeing in Ukraine right now. This was some "who dares wins" type stuff. Bet if we tried it again today, it would go a lot different.

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Bonus subcategory: Bad ideas in military history that somehow worked or paid off anyway. For example, the Tet offensive. Destroyed the North Vietnamese Army, but also somehow sapped America's political will to continue fighting.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, if they only lost two planes and no casualties, I'm guessing it can't have been TOO bad an idea. IMHO.

 

[Doubt]

---

Bonus subcategory: Bad ideas in military history that somehow worked or paid off anyway. For example, the Tet offensive. Destroyed the North Vietnamese Army, but also somehow sapped America's political will to continue fighting.

Somehow?

The metric used to measure progress in the war was the number of dead enemy. These numbers became an outright fraud. Had the number killed been anywhere near accurate, there never would have been a Tet offensive. The existence off the offensive put the lie to what the US army was claiming as progress in the war. The fault for this starts with both Westmorland and Secretary McNamara.

The offensive itself was a tactical failure. It was also a strategic success. The North had been using a dual track strategy between military and political operations. The Tet offensive was a the achievement of their political goals by discrediting the US. Although, at the time, it was not regarded as such by the north.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLF_a...zation_and_structure#/media/File:Dautranh.jpg

The linked graphic is a combination of Mao's military stages for a guerilla war in China. The political part was Giap's extension in Vietnam.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, in the bad ideas category, I'd vote for attacking your ally. Multiple examples, actually, but probably the least likely to be controversial is Napoleon's invasion of Spain. Spain had been an ally of France, and had helped him take Portugal and thus secure that possible route for the UK to get into the war.

Napoleon however -- being the unstable psycho we all know and love -- was growing dissatisfied with Spain. Spain had significant social unrest and had somewhat lost its usefulness anyway, after its fleet had been nearly obliterated at Trafalgar. (Yay for Nelson.) Which was also one part of the reason for that unrest. So he thinks, yeah, obviously that's because of a weak ruler. What Spain OBVIOUSLY needs is someone to rule it with an iron fist.

So he attacks his ally by surprise, without any declaration of war. The Spanish government was desperately asking why is their ally attacking their cities and got no answer all the way until... Napoleon forces the king to surrender and installs Napoleon's own brother as a puppet king. Then he starts confiscating wealth and imposes a ridiculous 100 million francs fine on Spain.

Well, needless to say, things didn't go like in his imagination.

One of the first things Spain did while still under attack by France was to pull its troops out of Portugal. You know, because it needed them desperately at home. Portugal was lost just like that, which allowed the UK a foothold that would bog Napoleon royally down.

Once the coup was complete, the Spanish went from unrest to outright rebellion. This would pretty much end up being Napoleon's Vietnam for the next several years. Not the least because, see above, now he would continue to face UK landings in the Iberian peninsula, which he never managed to control enough to stop them. Even when he'd manage to chase an army off, they'd just come back later.

So yeah, one dumb idea that cost thousands of lives and was as counter-productive as it gets.

 

[Trebuchet]

Dunno if this was a bad idea or a legitimate case of "we won't know one way or the other unless we actually try it", but in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the US decided to test the heavy air defenses around Baghdad with the largest F-16 sortie in history - 75 planes total. The sortie was a complete failure. No targets were hit. Miraculously only two of the attacking planes were shot down (both pilots survived). Before the test, only stealth planes and cruise missiles were being used on those targets. After the test, the US opted to continue only using stealth planes and cruise missiles on those targets.

Apparently part of the problem was bad OPSEC, so the defenders knew the sortie was coming and were well prepared. Also, in the early 90s the US lacked the battle management tools necessary to coordinate that many planes all at once. This exacerbated the difficulties they had refueling, and caused the air group to string out and trickle into the target area instead of properly saturating the defenses. Also the Iraqis had more radars than the escort jammers could suppress.

My general view is that everyone makes mistakes in war. I feel like, as long as you're making interesting mistakes, and learning from them, they're not necessarily bad ideas. This wasn't Russian vehicles rolling around the countryside without infantry screens, like we're seeing in Ukraine right now. This was some "who dares wins" type stuff. Bet if we tried it again today, it would go a lot different.

---

Bonus subcategory: Bad ideas in military history that somehow worked or paid off anyway. For example, the Tet offensive. Destroyed the North Vietnamese Army, but also somehow sapped America's political will to continue fighting.

Perhaps worse in that war, the US Army sent a detachment of AH-64 attack helicopters after an elite Iraqi regiment. They had been trained to fire from stationary, for accuracy. Moments after they took off, the entirely functional Iraqi cell phone network lit up, tracking their movements. When they go to the target, they went stationary to fire. Oops. One captured intact, pretty much all seriously damaged. No damage to the foe.
The USMC, relegated to older attack helicopters, trained their pilots to fire on the move.
Then there's the US Air Farce, which has spent the last 35 years trying to get rid of the A-10 because it doesn't look cool. Who cares if it just works?

 

[dudalb]

I'm finding it rather amusing that a "new posts" search a few minutes ago resulted in:
Bad Ideas in Military History
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine
in that order.

It's up there but I can think of a couple that were even more disasterous.
Teutonburg Forest and Little BIg Horn come to mind.

 

[dudalb]

Perhaps worse in that war, the US Army sent a detachment of AH-64 attack helicopters after an elite Iraqi regiment. They had been trained to fire from stationary, for accuracy. Moments after they took off, the entirely functional Iraqi cell phone network lit up, tracking their movements. When they go to the target, they went stationary to fire. Oops. One captured intact, pretty much all seriously damaged. No damage to the foe.
The USMC, relegated to older attack helicopters, trained their pilots to fire on the move.
Then there's the US Air Farce, which has spent the last 35 years trying to get rid of the A-10 because it doesn't look cool. Who cares if it just works?

Close Air Support has always had..until recently..a tough time n the USAF which always been dominating by The feud between the Bomber Barons and the Fighter Mafia with CAS a distant third in beureaucratic war.

 

[dudalb]

Well, in the bad ideas category, I'd vote for attacking your ally. Multiple examples, actually, but probably the least likely to be controversial is Napoleon's invasion of Spain. Spain had been an ally of France, and had helped him take Portugal and thus secure that possible route for the UK to get into the war.

Napoleon however -- being the unstable psycho we all know and love -- was growing dissatisfied with Spain. Spain had significant social unrest and had somewhat lost its usefulness anyway, after its fleet had been nearly obliterated at Trafalgar. (Yay for Nelson.) Which was also one part of the reason for that unrest. So he thinks, yeah, obviously that's because of a weak ruler. What Spain OBVIOUSLY needs is someone to rule it with an iron fist.

So he attacks his ally by surprise, without any declaration of war. The Spanish government was desperately asking why is their ally attacking their cities and got no answer all the way until... Napoleon forces the king to surrender and installs Napoleon's own brother as a puppet king. Then he starts confiscating wealth and imposes a ridiculous 100 million francs fine on Spain.

Well, needless to say, things didn't go like in his imagination.

One of the first things Spain did while still under attack by France was to pull its troops out of Portugal. You know, because it needed them desperately at home. Portugal was lost just like that, which allowed the UK a foothold that would bog Napoleon royally down.

Once the coup was complete, the Spanish went from unrest to outright rebellion. This would pretty much end up being Napoleon's Vietnam for the next several years. Not the least because, see above, now he would continue to face UK landings in the Iberian peninsula, which he never managed to control enough to stop them. Even when he'd manage to chase an army off, they'd just come back later.

So yeah, one dumb idea that cost thousands of lives and was as counter-productive as it gets.

High price to pay to put a incompetent brother on a throne...

 

[Trebuchet]

Close Air Support has always had..until recently..a tough time n the USAF which always been dominating by The feud between the Bomber Barons and the Fighter Mafia with CAS a distant third in beureaucratic war.

Which is why I've said for years that the only thing wrong with the A-10 is the writing on the side. It ought to say "US ARMY".
50 years ago, I had that writing on my shirts. Er, "blouses". It means "Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet." 50 years ago, I was getting very short!

 

[dudalb]

Are battlecruisers still considered a bad idea, or has the thinking shifted to 'they were fine but they used them wrong'?

I recall Beatty's understated line at Jutland: "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today", after two blew up spectacularly. That seems to have been partly due to design, and partly due to powder handling.

---

Along the same lines, I've never been able to decide if armored cruisers were a bad idea from the start or if I'm just blinded by hindsight.

From what I have read, Battlecruisers were never supposed to serve in the line fo battle and slug it out with Battleships, but they were so expensive to build that the pressure to put them into the Line Of Battle in major engagements became impossible to resist.

 

[Trebuchet]

From what I have read, Battlecruisers were never supposed to serve in the line fo battle and slug it out with Battleships, but they were so expensive to build that the pressure to put them into the Line Of Battle in major engagements became impossible to resist.

The concept of the Battlecruiser was to be able to outfight anything you couldn't outrun, and outrun anything you couldn't outfight. That was demonstrated in the Battle of the Falklands, where the battlecruisers were able to do both against Von Spee's ships, although the outcome might have been different had Von Spee retained some AP ammo, since he scored several hits to one British in the earlier stages.
The gaping hole in the concept was the very real possibliity of BC's coming up against one of their own kind. Especially one that may have been a knot or so slower, had an inch or so smaller guns, but was better armored and better trained. That was what was wrong with Beatty's bloody ships.

 

[HansMustermann]

There may be an alternate explanation: the composition and manufacturing standards of the cordite used at the time, combined with the lax standards in keeping the ship clean. (And at least the British ships tended to explode in battle. The French occasionally just detonated for no obvious reason.)

I'm not a chemist myself, but Drachinifel had a video where a real chemist with expertise in explosives explains that hypothesis.

 

[steenkh]

There may be an alternate explanation: the composition and manufacturing standards of the cordite used at the time, combined with the lax standards in keeping the ship clean. (And at least the British ships tended to explode in battle. The French occasionally just detonated for no obvious reason.)

I'm not a chemist myself, but Drachinifel had a video where a real chemist with expertise in explosives explains that hypothesis.

I don’t remember British BCs exploding without being hit by enemy shells. Are there really such cases?

 

[HansMustermann]

No, that was the French. His argument for the British is that the nitroglycerin powder everywhere, accumulating even before battle as they kept exercising loading and unloading the guns, could create a flash when the turret was hit. And possibly also help it propagate down the shaft.

Also that if some flash or hit did make it to the magazine, it would result in an instant flash that you had effectively zero time to do anything about. By way of comparison, the Germans had the time to flood the magazines even when they caught on fire.

There's also an argument he didn't make, that everyone being SURE that cordite was safe, led many to being lax about which loaded and unloaded charge goes into which tube. It seems that the Admiralty was at least SOMEWHAT aware that there's a problem with very old cordite, since they stamped an expiration date on each tube for those cordite bags, and expired charges were to be replaced with new ones. However it seems that the actual personnel were so sure cordite is safe and that's just some silly regulation, that they just put any bag in any tube when exercising. Repeat that thousands of times as they keep training, and it all becomes completely randomized, when it comes to which old (and thus increasingly unstable) cordite bag is in which new tube and viceversa.

There is at least one documented case where that discovery was made, and it led to replacing every single cordite bag on one ship in a hurry.

But yes, basically it was highly unlikely unless something had already gone *bang* somewhere. But when it did, it could be amplified to a catastrophe in an instant. The French were even less lucky with their Poudre B, though.