Topic: Military history (Page 19)

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πŸ”— Fifth-Generation Warfare

πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory

Fifth-generation warfare (5GW) is warfare that is conducted primarily through non-kinetic military action, such as social engineering, misinformation, cyberattacks, along with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and fully autonomous systems. Fifth generation warfare has been described by Daniel Abbot as a war of "information and perception". There is no widely agreed upon definition of fifth-generation warfare, and it has been rejected by some scholars, including William S. Lind, who was one of the original theorists of fourth-generation warfare.

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πŸ”— W. T. Tutte - mathematician and code breaker

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Mathematics πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military biography πŸ”— Cryptography πŸ”— Cryptography/Computer science πŸ”— Military history/European military history πŸ”— Military history/British military history

William Thomas "Bill" Tutte OC FRS FRSC (; 14 May 1917 – 2 May 2002) was a British codebreaker and mathematician. During the Second World War, he made a brilliant and fundamental advance in cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, a major Nazi German cipher system which was used for top-secret communications within the Wehrmacht High Command. The high-level, strategic nature of the intelligence obtained from Tutte's crucial breakthrough, in the bulk decrypting of Lorenz-enciphered messages specifically, contributed greatly, and perhaps even decisively, to the defeat of Nazi Germany. He also had a number of significant mathematical accomplishments, including foundation work in the fields of graph theory and matroid theory.

Tutte's research in the field of graph theory proved to be of remarkable importance. At a time when graph theory was still a primitive subject, Tutte commenced the study of matroids and developed them into a theory by expanding from the work that Hassler Whitney had first developed around the mid 1930s. Even though Tutte's contributions to graph theory have been influential to modern graph theory and many of his theorems have been used to keep making advances in the field, most of his terminology was not in agreement with their conventional usage and thus his terminology is not used by graph theorists today. "Tutte advanced graph theory from a subject with one text (D. KΕ‘nig's) toward its present extremely active state."

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πŸ”— British Navy against slave trade

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/African military history πŸ”— British Empire πŸ”— Military history/Maritime warfare πŸ”— African diaspora πŸ”— Military history/European military history πŸ”— Military history/British military history

The British Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron at substantial expense in 1808 after Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act of 1807, an Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The squadron's task was to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa. With a home base at Portsmouth, England, it began with two small ships, the 32-gun fifth-rate frigate HMSΒ Solebay and the Cruizer-class brig-sloop HMSΒ Derwent. At the height of its operations, the squadron employed a sixth of the Royal Navy fleet and marines. In 1819 the Royal Navy established a West Coast of Africa Station and the West Africa Squadron became known as the Preventative Squadron. It remained an independent command until 1856 and then again 1866 to 1867. Between 1830 and 1865, more than 1,500 British sailors died on their mission of freeing slaves with the West Africa Squadron.

Between 1808 and 1860 the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans. It is considered the most costly international moral action in modern history.

The Squadron has been described as being poorly resourced and plagued by corruption; it only managed to capture around 6% of the transatlantic slave ships, but patrolling 3,000 miles of African coast from 1808 to 1860 it liberated 150,000 Africans.

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πŸ”— Thermobaric Weapon

πŸ”— Technology πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military aviation πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Explosives

A thermobaric weapon, aerosol bomb, or vacuum bomb is a type of explosive that uses oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion. In practice, the blast wave typically produced by such a weapon is of a significantly longer duration than that of a conventional condensed explosive. The fuel–air explosive is one of the best-known types of thermobaric weapon.

Most conventional explosives consist of a fuel–oxidizer premix (black powder, for example, contains 25% fuel and 75% oxidizer), but thermobaric weapons are almost 100% fuel and so are significantly more energetic than conventional condensed explosives of equal weight. Their reliance on atmospheric oxygen makes them unsuitable for use under water, at high altitude, and in adverse weather. They are, however, considerably more destructive when used against field fortifications such as foxholes, tunnels, bunkers, and caves, partly because of the sustained blast wave and partly by the consumption of the oxygen inside it.

Many types of thermobaric weapons can be fitted to hand-held launchers.

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πŸ”— Atrocity propaganda

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Politics πŸ”— Media πŸ”— Journalism

Atrocity propaganda is the spreading of information about the crimes committed by an enemy, which can be factual, but often includes or features deliberate fabrications or exaggerations. This can involve photographs, videos, illustrations, interviews, and other forms of information presentation or reporting.

The inherently violent nature of war means that exaggeration and invention of atrocities often becomes the main staple of propaganda. Patriotism is often not enough to make people hate the enemy, and propaganda is also necessary. "So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations", wrote Harold Lasswell, "that every war must appear to be a war of defense against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about who the public is to hate." Human testimony may be unreliable even in ordinary circumstances, but in wartime, it can be further muddled by bias, sentiment, and misguided patriotism.

According to Paul Linebarger, atrocity propaganda leads to real atrocities, as it incites the enemy into committing more atrocities, and, by heating up passions, it increases the chances of one's own side committing atrocities, in revenge for the ones reported in propaganda. Atrocity propaganda might also lead the public to mistrust reports of actual atrocities. In January 1944, Arthur Koestler wrote of his frustration at trying to communicate what he had witnessed in Nazi-occupied Europe: the legacy of anti-German stories during World War I, many of which were debunked in the postwar years, meant that these reports were received with considerable amounts of skepticism.

Like propaganda, atrocity rumors detailing exaggerated or invented crimes perpetrated by enemies are also circulated to vilify the opposing side. The application of atrocity propaganda is not limited to times of conflict but can be implemented to sway public opinion and create a Casus belli to declare war.

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πŸ”— Charge of the Savoia Cavalleria at Izbushensky

πŸ”— Soviet Union πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Italy πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history πŸ”— Military history/Italian military history πŸ”— Military history/European military history

The Charge of the "Savoia Cavalleria" at Izbushensky was a clash between the Italian cavalry Regiment "Savoia Cavalleria" (3rd) and the Soviet 812th Rifle Regiment (304th Rifle Division) that took place on August 24, 1942, near the hamlet (khutor) of Izbushensky (Π˜Π·Π±ΡƒΡˆΠ΅Π½ΡΠΊΠΈΠΉ), close to the junction between the Don and Khopyor rivers. Though a minor skirmish in the theatre of operation of the Eastern Front, the Izbushensky charge had great propaganda resonance in Italy and it is still remembered as one of the last significant cavalry charges in history.

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πŸ”— Anti-Tank Dog

πŸ”— Russia πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Dogs πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Military history/German military history πŸ”— Military history/Military land vehicles πŸ”— Russia/Russian, Soviet, and CIS military history πŸ”— Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history πŸ”— Russia/history of Russia πŸ”— Military history/European military history

Anti-tank dogs (Russian: собаки-истрСбитСли Ρ‚Π°Π½ΠΊΠΎΠ² sobaki-istrebiteli tankov or ΠΏΡ€ΠΎΡ‚ΠΈΠ²ΠΎΡ‚Π°Π½ΠΊΠΎΠ²Ρ‹Π΅ собаки protivotankovye sobaki; German: Panzerabwehrhunde or Hundeminen, "dog-mines") were dogs taught to carry explosives to tanks, armored vehicles and other military targets. They were intensively trained by the Soviet and Russian military forces between 1930 and 1996, and used from 1941 to 1943, against German tanks in World War II. Initially dogs were trained to leave a timer-detonated bomb and retreat, but this routine was replaced by an impact-detonation procedure which killed the dog in the process. The U.S. military started training anti-tank dogs in 1943 in the same way the Russians used them, but this training exposed several problems and the program was discontinued.

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πŸ”— Cable 1971

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Bangladesh πŸ”— Military history/Intelligence πŸ”— Pakistan

Cable 1971, otherwise known as Priority Signal or File 1971 was a high profile and secret military signal communicated in December 1952 between the two main inter-services branches of Pakistan–the Pakistan Army and the Pakistan Navy. It is notable for the fact that it essentially predicted the separation of Pakistan and Bangladesh and by coincidence its title contained the year in which the separation actually happened, almost 20 years later.

The military cable was directed through the Naval Intelligence and Military Intelligence to ISI sent to its headquarter and came in the wake of reactionary of Basic Principles Committee's first report towards the writing of the first set of the Constitution of Pakistan. The cable was sent by then-Commodore S.M. Ahsan to DG ISI Major-General R. Cawthome on a file coincidentally numbered 1971. The cable discussed the implication of One Unit, religious fanaticism, and the economic parity between the West and East Pakistan that will ultimately result in the division of Pakistan into two different groups.

The Cable's message read as:

  • The creation of Committee of Ulema to veto the decisions taken in the House of People on religious matters, gives excess of powers to Ulema over the rights of elected representatives of the people. This gives an impression of Pakistan as being a Theocratic State.
  • To recommend that the head of the state should be a Muslim will unnecessarily create suspicions in minds of the minorities in Pakistan. The choice to select the head of the state should be left entirely to the people, to select without prejudice to caste, colour and creed.
  • It is maintained by same officers that a single House elected on population basis should have been envisaged, and we should cease to think in terms of Bengalis and Punjabis etc. The parity between West & East Pakistan will ultimately result in the division of Pakistan into two different groups, therefore, it is the very negation of one people, one country and one culture.

The cable's message was further extended and discussed at the Army GHQ by MI's officer Major KM Arif when he compiled an "Intelligence Report No. 7894 of the Office of Intelligence Research and Analysis" in December 1970.

The cable is notable for its highlighted title and many historians found strange that the cable was coincidentally numbered: Cable/File 1971.

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πŸ”— 50th anniversary of the first human space flight

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Aviation πŸ”— Soviet Union πŸ”— Russia πŸ”— Russia/technology and engineering in Russia πŸ”— Spaceflight πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military aviation πŸ”— Biography/science and academia πŸ”— Military history/Military biography πŸ”— Biography/military biography πŸ”— Aviation/aerospace biography πŸ”— Military history/Cold War πŸ”— Biography/sports and games πŸ”— Russia/Russian, Soviet, and CIS military history πŸ”— Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history πŸ”— Russia/history of Russia

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarinβ€Š (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet Air Forces pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space, achieving a major milestone in the Space Race; his capsule Vostok 1 completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. Gagarin became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, his nation's highest honour.

Born in the village of Klushino near Gzhatsk (a town later renamed after him), in his youth Gagarin was a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy. He later joined the Soviet Air Forces as a pilot and was stationed at the Luostari Air Base, near the Norwegian border, before his selection for the Soviet space programme with five other cosmonauts. Following his spaceflight, Gagarin became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre, which was later named after him. He was also elected as a deputy of the Soviet of the Union in 1962 and then to the Soviet of Nationalities, respectively the lower and upper chambers of the Supreme Soviet.

Vostok 1 was Gagarin's only spaceflight but he served as the backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission, which ended in a fatal crash, killing his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Fearing for his life, Soviet officials permanently banned Gagarin from further spaceflights. After completing training at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy on 17 February 1968, he was allowed to fly regular aircraft. Gagarin died five weeks later when the MiG-15 training jet he was piloting with his flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin crashed near the town of Kirzhach.

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πŸ”— List of Nuclear Close Calls

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Disaster management πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Lists

A nuclear close call is an incident that could lead to, or could have led to at least one unintended nuclear detonation/explosion. These incidents typically involve a perceived imminent threat to a nuclear-armed country which could lead to retaliatory strikes against the perceived aggressor. The damage caused by international nuclear exchange is not necessarily limited to the participating countries, as the hypothesized rapid climate change associated with even small-scale regional nuclear war could threaten food production worldwideβ€”a scenario known as nuclear famine.

Despite a reduction in global nuclear tensions and major nuclear arms reductions after the end of the Cold War (in 1989), estimated nuclear warhead stockpiles total roughly 15,000 worldwide, with the United States and Russia holding 90% of the total.

Though exact details on many nuclear close calls are hard to come by, the analysis of particular cases has highlighted the importance of a variety of factors in preventing accidents. At an international level, this includes the importance of context and outside mediation; at the national level, effectiveness in government communications, and involvement of key decision-makers; and, at the individual level, the decisive role of individuals in following intuition and prudent decision-making, often in violation of protocol.

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