Hayao Miyazaki interpreted the Caproni Ca.60 Transaereo, built in Italy in 1921, in his 2013 film The Wind Rises. The prototype crashed on its second flight and was never built as an operational plane. However, it was an evident attempt to build large bombers to be used for the extermination of civilians according to the doctrine proposed by Giulio Douhet in his famous 1921 book, “The Command of the Air.”
A very important review Ugo. Thank you. Wars in the past have of course been very cruelly destructive of civilian populations. Industrialisation and large metropolitan populations upped the stakes. Previous 'arms races' are now accelerated. The background is now satellite survellance and decision taking at electronic speed. Air defence is still possible against low cost low speed drones, but hypersonic ballistics change military strategy. It is possible to take out carrier fleets or indeed remote airbases with astonishing accuracy, thus altering the concept of air superiority in conventional warfare. The current world hegemonic 'force projection' is under threat.
The current hideous return of WW2 logic now being served on a very large civilian population undoes all the post war efforts that developed UN and international treaties, but the accelerated development of technologies relies on economic survival in the face of large energy and material oncoming constraints. Which seems both cause and downfall for the global confrontation?
Slaughterhouse Five is one of my favorite books. I read it when I was in High school in 1974 or so. It made a life-long impression on me. The movie does the book justice, as Vonnegut oversaw its production.
Every time I see new weapons, including the ones governments use to control their own populations, I think of how many of them will disappear once the fossil fuels used to build, power and maintain them become unavailable. Of course, military and police units will be among the last to lose access to them.
Observing the trends, it seems that we have a quite mad ruling class, quite self-serving and ruthless well suited to sociopathic acts bordering clinical psychopathy.
This is historically true and quite effective if you don't need an industrial base to survive and don't feel the need for comfort in your life, the various barbaric hordes and empires or the common criminal (organized or not) are testament to it: destroy, steal, fraud and similar are more simple than produce the goods and services that are needed or desired.
Industrializing war made it difficult to make wars like WW2, mass carnage is useful only in limited conditions and is quite assured today that if you want to conquer something you must play nice because open warfare is the first and last difficult part of a war, outside the strict theater also during the 2 WWrs a lot was done to keep things under check by MILITARY FRONTLINE COMMANDS: peoples on the frontline didn't like a lot of "smart thinking" of the top brasses at home and that is equally true for the GI or the command staff in the mud, at this level is often preferred the use of play nice because today you are nice to the enemy, but tomorrow may be that you need that the enemy be nice with you...
Humans have a lot of narrations and theories, but we can look at numbers! Wars have a constant trend in reducing casualties, a proportional trend in increasing propriety damage (by value) and a parallel trend to be more focused on economic aspects in fields not so related to killing: production, logistic, maintenance and similar have the priority, today we need 20 people focused on ancillary role for every GI with a gun (production excluded) and more we go up with the complexity of the weapon more the ancillary train go up, keep 10 tanks running can get more than 500 people tending them crew included and airplanes are far worse...
The net effect seems that wars are becoming a constant (from 1990 to today we have an almost constant state of war) but with quite limited real death (compared to population) but a lot more of wear and tear, propriety damage, physical and mental injuries, refugee and similar are a thin fraction but a constant one. We can see it looking at all the western conflicts from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan and a similar trend is evident also in interventions of other powers (Cecenia for Russia, Syrian conflict for all actors, Libyan conflict for all actors etc) what drones can give us is a change on focus in making war, but that is an evolution of the ongoing trend: smart munitions (missiles in any form in primis) made hi value hardware impractical, a "costly" missile can destroy an asset of order of magnitude more value (es cruise missile VS aircraft carrier) but hi value civilian infrastructure (material and immaterial) is more worth intact than damaged so the winning side have more interest in preserving it in enemy territory.
Net effects combined:
-Wars are won years after the last shell spent, "mission accomplished" is by economy
-Killing civilian is bad, killing propriety is acceptable (houses, infrastructure, industry etc), minimal damage is the goal
-Fancy expensive weapons are good for propaganda so we want them but are good only to bully someone almost unarmed, small cheap and diffuse weapon are for real war, both are useful
-Drones extend the trend giving "missiles" on the cheap and probably compensating the shrinking population of USEFUL soldiers (civilian military enthusiast are terrible and dangerous soldiers)
There are several considerations that technology has brought to the in which wars are waged.
Targeting is now much more precise than was ever possible in times past; this reduces the need or desirability of carpet bombing. Thus we can go for the "jugular" and cut off supplies, manufacturing, and other logistics directly and accurately. Also, drone warfare looks like a revolution in terms of reducing the expense.
Also to be considered is the technology that allows killing easily at a distance. We learn in books like "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society" by Dave Grossman that most soldiers are instinctively reluctant to kill, and have to be manipulated into it. Among other things, firing missiles and dropping bombs means that a soldier does not have to look his victim in the eye like he did prior to the industrial age. Aircraft are ideal for killing at a distance.
But perhaps the biggest unrecognized changes are societal. True democracy and consent of the governed seems to be fading, and with its demise, the idea that killing lots of "enemy" civilians will motivate them to pressure or even change out their government may no longer be workable; it is no longer so easy for them to throw out their leaders to end a war unless they just string them up like Mussolini. Conversely, making an obvious effort to spare them may make them easier to manage post-conflict, since the level of residual hate for the (former) enemy may be lower.
What if, as appears to be the case in Gaza/Israel/Palestine, the actual intention is mass "extermination", which was an ancient/"biblical" model of genocidal war?
"Shlachthaus-Funf" .. profound book. "Billy Pilgrim was unstuck in time."
A very important review Ugo. Thank you. Wars in the past have of course been very cruelly destructive of civilian populations. Industrialisation and large metropolitan populations upped the stakes. Previous 'arms races' are now accelerated. The background is now satellite survellance and decision taking at electronic speed. Air defence is still possible against low cost low speed drones, but hypersonic ballistics change military strategy. It is possible to take out carrier fleets or indeed remote airbases with astonishing accuracy, thus altering the concept of air superiority in conventional warfare. The current world hegemonic 'force projection' is under threat.
The current hideous return of WW2 logic now being served on a very large civilian population undoes all the post war efforts that developed UN and international treaties, but the accelerated development of technologies relies on economic survival in the face of large energy and material oncoming constraints. Which seems both cause and downfall for the global confrontation?
Slaughterhouse Five is one of my favorite books. I read it when I was in High school in 1974 or so. It made a life-long impression on me. The movie does the book justice, as Vonnegut oversaw its production.
Every time I see new weapons, including the ones governments use to control their own populations, I think of how many of them will disappear once the fossil fuels used to build, power and maintain them become unavailable. Of course, military and police units will be among the last to lose access to them.
Yes. Great book. Incredibly good. I remember all the scenes in it.
Observing the trends, it seems that we have a quite mad ruling class, quite self-serving and ruthless well suited to sociopathic acts bordering clinical psychopathy.
This is historically true and quite effective if you don't need an industrial base to survive and don't feel the need for comfort in your life, the various barbaric hordes and empires or the common criminal (organized or not) are testament to it: destroy, steal, fraud and similar are more simple than produce the goods and services that are needed or desired.
Industrializing war made it difficult to make wars like WW2, mass carnage is useful only in limited conditions and is quite assured today that if you want to conquer something you must play nice because open warfare is the first and last difficult part of a war, outside the strict theater also during the 2 WWrs a lot was done to keep things under check by MILITARY FRONTLINE COMMANDS: peoples on the frontline didn't like a lot of "smart thinking" of the top brasses at home and that is equally true for the GI or the command staff in the mud, at this level is often preferred the use of play nice because today you are nice to the enemy, but tomorrow may be that you need that the enemy be nice with you...
Humans have a lot of narrations and theories, but we can look at numbers! Wars have a constant trend in reducing casualties, a proportional trend in increasing propriety damage (by value) and a parallel trend to be more focused on economic aspects in fields not so related to killing: production, logistic, maintenance and similar have the priority, today we need 20 people focused on ancillary role for every GI with a gun (production excluded) and more we go up with the complexity of the weapon more the ancillary train go up, keep 10 tanks running can get more than 500 people tending them crew included and airplanes are far worse...
The net effect seems that wars are becoming a constant (from 1990 to today we have an almost constant state of war) but with quite limited real death (compared to population) but a lot more of wear and tear, propriety damage, physical and mental injuries, refugee and similar are a thin fraction but a constant one. We can see it looking at all the western conflicts from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan and a similar trend is evident also in interventions of other powers (Cecenia for Russia, Syrian conflict for all actors, Libyan conflict for all actors etc) what drones can give us is a change on focus in making war, but that is an evolution of the ongoing trend: smart munitions (missiles in any form in primis) made hi value hardware impractical, a "costly" missile can destroy an asset of order of magnitude more value (es cruise missile VS aircraft carrier) but hi value civilian infrastructure (material and immaterial) is more worth intact than damaged so the winning side have more interest in preserving it in enemy territory.
Net effects combined:
-Wars are won years after the last shell spent, "mission accomplished" is by economy
-Killing civilian is bad, killing propriety is acceptable (houses, infrastructure, industry etc), minimal damage is the goal
-Fancy expensive weapons are good for propaganda so we want them but are good only to bully someone almost unarmed, small cheap and diffuse weapon are for real war, both are useful
-Drones extend the trend giving "missiles" on the cheap and probably compensating the shrinking population of USEFUL soldiers (civilian military enthusiast are terrible and dangerous soldiers)
There are several considerations that technology has brought to the in which wars are waged.
Targeting is now much more precise than was ever possible in times past; this reduces the need or desirability of carpet bombing. Thus we can go for the "jugular" and cut off supplies, manufacturing, and other logistics directly and accurately. Also, drone warfare looks like a revolution in terms of reducing the expense.
Also to be considered is the technology that allows killing easily at a distance. We learn in books like "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society" by Dave Grossman that most soldiers are instinctively reluctant to kill, and have to be manipulated into it. Among other things, firing missiles and dropping bombs means that a soldier does not have to look his victim in the eye like he did prior to the industrial age. Aircraft are ideal for killing at a distance.
But perhaps the biggest unrecognized changes are societal. True democracy and consent of the governed seems to be fading, and with its demise, the idea that killing lots of "enemy" civilians will motivate them to pressure or even change out their government may no longer be workable; it is no longer so easy for them to throw out their leaders to end a war unless they just string them up like Mussolini. Conversely, making an obvious effort to spare them may make them easier to manage post-conflict, since the level of residual hate for the (former) enemy may be lower.
What if, as appears to be the case in Gaza/Israel/Palestine, the actual intention is mass "extermination", which was an ancient/"biblical" model of genocidal war?
"Shlachthaus-Funf" .. profound book. "Billy Pilgrim was unstuck in time."