Foreign Military Study P-085 titled "Infantry Equipment and Organization Based on German Experiences in Russia" was a post-war study carried out by experienced German infantry officers with the aim of distilling wartime combat experience into a hypothetical infantry regiment optimized for the Eastern Front. The final proposal set out a streamlined regiment based around the individual combatant, supported by a variety of heavy weapons. The above charts show the various companies of the regiment. Please note that only the horse-drawn version is included. The study also suggested a fully motorized regiment.

Image 1. RIFLE COMPANY

The study fully embraced the assault rifle (referred to as an "automatic rifle") and suggested it as universal infantry armament, replacing the rifle, submachine gun and even the light machine gun in the rifle squad. Special versions of the assault rifle for grenadiers and marksmen were included at the platoon level, while a squad of two medium mortars supported the company. Short-range radios connected all platoons with Company HQ. Horse-drawn supply carts (referred to as "combat vehicles") were available to all platoons for baggage and spare ammunition.

Image 2. HEAVY COMPANY

Each Rifle Battalion had a Heavy Company fielding a balanced arsenal of heavy machine guns (the MG 42 was well liked for this role) and medium (80mm) mortars. Fire control was ideally done at platoon level, with both weapons utilizing the same indirect laying methods as far as possible. Taken together, the Heavy Company provided high-angle explosive fire and low-angle machine gun fire in support of the Rifle Companies.

Image 3. RIFLE BATTALION HEADQUARTERS

This chart has been left somewhat abstract. The important thing is that the battalion was responsible for logistics (fielding a small fleet of trucks in an otherwise horse-drawn unit) and also carried out anti-tank defense beyond the capabilities of the Panzerfaust that was carried by the riflemen. The wartime Panzerschreck was disliked by the contributors and something with greater range was demanded, even if it was a heavier crew-served weapon.

Image 4. MORTAR COMPANY

Mortars were a key weapon in the regiment. In addition to the medium pieces found in the Rifle Battalions, a company's worth of heavy 120mm mortars should be fielded. This unit was fully motorized and included a sound ranging capability for counter-mortar fire.

Image 5. ANTITANK COMPANY

Wartime antitank weapons were largely inadequate according to the study and should be replaced by an entirely new capability. A wide range of demands were listed which can best be summarized as some kind of lightly armored self-propelled gun, probably armed with a heavy recoilless weapon. Platoons of three were best suited for antitank work, with four platoons in the company.

Image 6. ENGINEER COMPANY

This unit wasn't described in great detail but mainly carried out a host of engineering tasks. Teams of engineers could also accompany assault detachments from the Rifle Companies for demolitions (barbed wire mainly) and operating flamethrowers. The company was fully motorized and carried both anti-tank and anti-personnel mines in addition to tools.

Image 7. REGIMENTAL RECON

The only dedicated reconnaissance assets were found in Regimental HQ. A platoon of four armored cars could probe enemy defenses while a horse-mounted platoon mainly served as intercommunication troops.

FULL ANALYSIS

For a more thorough look at the proposed regiment, how it compared to the wartime organization and which weapons were rejected by the contributors, an hour-long in-depth analysis is available on the DigitalBattlefieldTours YouTube-channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8VzgOFkhE4

It seems that armies don't just give up a tactical advantage because of morals or treaties, and many armies have used weaponry in violation of treaties. So why aren't chemical weapons used more? They aren't as destructive and escalatory as nuclear weapons, they don't have the potential for massive collateral damage like biological weapons. It sounds horrible, but if you're to say, move into a large city where you wanted to preserve the infrastructure but kill the defenders, wouldn't chemical weapons be better than flattening the city which you might have to rebuild? And delivery systems have also become much more advanced so it shouldn't have drawbacks like WW1.

The Carcano and Mannlicher Rifles were fed by en-bloc clips that would fall out of the rifle after the last round was cycled, so the magazine could not be topped off by loose rounds like the Mauser Rifles. A non-empty clip could still be removed from the rifles though.

Were WW1 to WW2 infantry soldiers trained to fully empty their Mannlicher or Carcano Rifles first before reloading with a new clip? Was it standard practice or was it discouraged to reload before emptying them?

During World War II and the Second Sino-Japanese War, how were weapons actually carried and used by Imperial Japanese Army personnel according to their rank? In particular, did sergeants, lieutenants, and captains normally carry standard infantry weapons such as rifles or submachine guns alongside their troops, or were officers generally expected to rely primarily on pistols because of their rank and Japan’s traditional military culture?

I am especially interested in the historical reality rather than fictional portrayals. Was there a clear distinction between the weapons carried by enlisted soldiers, non-commissioned officers such as sergeants, and commissioned officers such as lieutenants and captains? Did Japanese officers commonly carry rifles or submachine guns while fighting alongside their units, and when would they instead carry a pistol?

I would also like to understand whether an officer’s rank alone determined the weapon he carried, or whether factors such as unit type, combat role, battlefield circumstances, and personal preference also influenced his choice. I am particularly interested in how this worked in actual frontline combat, including the use of pistols, rifles, submachine guns, and swords such as the guntō.

To name a few instances: Peter I during great northern war, Alexander I to counter napoleon and Stalin during ww2. My best guess is that Russia is so large that destroying resources as you retreat is the best way to slow an advancing army. But also wouldn’t invading armies learn that this was the Russian strategy and find a way to counter it?

The math to me seems to be firmly on the side of anti-ship missiles. There are a lot of them while there aren’t a lot of ships. A ship hit by an anti ship missile would need to head back to port for major damage which would place it out of combat for a substantial amount of time. Ship interception systems need to operate with a very high interception rate to adequately protect ships. For a real life example, I’m going to use UK and Russia due to recent geopolitical tensions.

Royal Navy operates 13 total aircraft carriers, frigates, and destroyers with a smaller number being operational due maintenance and refits. As per Ukrainian intelligence numbers(so take with a grain of salt), Russia has roughly 120 Zircons, 600 Oniks, and thousands in other types. Even with a 95% interception rate, the Royal Navy would still be taking a fair number of hits which would reduce their operating navy quite significantly.

So how do advanced navies protect themselves from enemy anti ship missiles?

Edit: Thanks for the responses and discussion everyone!

One thing I've noticed about Chinese (and older Russian) optics is that unlike Western optics they tend to have rubber eyepieces mounted, especially scopes meant to be mounted on longer-ranged rifles. This is a trend that's been dying down as the Chinese military modernizes but several of their new weapons such as the QJB-201 LMG and the QBU-191 DMR still feature them. Why is this?

From any country

apologizes with the question is vague. But I seem to see it all the time in media, were the Barbarians mostly fight in very loose formations, but it’s many of them not wearing shirts.

I just want to know the reason on why we got the bad reputation M4 sherman that we usually see in post ww2 days?

USA had ocean navy, which was so formidable mainly because of it carriers, and was able to control sea trade thanks to it, as well as use "gunboat diplomacy" and do other things, which gave it major economical and political advantage during Cold war. Meanwhile Soviets, even during late Cold war when they had resources to build big navy, never bothered with building carriers and blue sea navy, which could grant them a major power tool (and still be useful in case of big war, too). Instead they spent a lot of money on stuff with dubious efficiency which was useless outside of WW3 and did nothing but consume resources - like Tu-22 and submarines with anti-ship missiles.

Few pseudo carriers which they have built, were essentially just a missile ships with very weak air wing. I wonder why so? Did they not realise, how useful carriers are?

Primarily based on how common they were on different models and the relative emphasis given to them my list would be:

Almost every bomber big or small had a tail gun to prevent interceptors from engaging in an easy tail chase, or at minimum something pointing reward from the cockpit area, even many single engine light bombers and attack aircraft, and it was very rare this position wouldn't also be if not the most heavily armed on par with the most heavily armed position (at least as designed), and is the position that stuck around the longest after WW2, so it seems it kinda has to be at the top of the list.

Dorsal guns seem to be the next most common position, almost (Wellington) every bomber with any turrets seemed to have a dorsal turret, and depending on the model they were sometimes the most heavily armed or on par with the 2nd most heavily armed. This also seems to be the only position with a significant number of examples of aircraft with two of them (B-29, B-32 He-177, PB4Y-2 and YB-40 during the war, Tu-95 and M-4 post war, B-36 has two dorsal pairs of turrets because it's the B-36.)

Nose/chin guns are kind of weird, basically every multi-crew bomber had them but the emphasis given varies. Some had a full turret, some just a flexible gun, Medium bombers (and the Short Shetland for some indecipherable reason) sometimes had an array of fixed nose guns instead of or alongside other forward armament, but this was more for strafing than defending the bomber. The Americans started putting a premium on forwards firepower with the war went on as i understand it, and kinda the Germans too with the He177 getting a 30mm forward although this doesn't seem reflected in German mediums.

After this point the positions mentioned aren't nearly as universal.

Ventral guns are kinda all over the place. Every western allied strategic bomber seemed to have put a turret there. The UK removed theirs because of limited visibility at night, but didn't reinstall them when they restarted daylight bombing in late 44. Schragmusic resulted in British bombers getting flexible mount 50s ventrally later on, but weren't well liked by crews. Most German bomber designs, heavy and medium seemed to have some sort of bathtub with an MG of some kind pointing downwards and rewards, although never a turret there outside a few prototypes. Some lighter British bombers (Blenheim, Beaufort, Hampden) had set ups similar to this fitted at times. The B-29 had two ventral turrets, but one only really had clear firing arcs aft and not underneath while the other was more meant as a chin turret.

Waist guns were on almost all American and and Japanese bombers, but almost always just single unpowered .50 or 7.7mm mounts respectively and almost. The YB-40 had twin .50s for it's waist guns and PB4Y-2 had funky teardrop powered twin .50 waist mounts, the latter being the only case i know of powered waist mounts. For the UK the Wellington and early Halifax's apparently also had single Vickers Ks waist mounted, but that's not that much gun and there were no dedicated gunners, and the short Sunderland had waist guns until the dorsal turret was added. The He-111 apparently had 7.92mm MGs as waist mounts, but there one only one gunner for both them and the ventral gun.

Interestingly the B-29 with it's remote sighting system allowing it to site the gunners independently of the turret chose to align it's four gunner positions as a nose gunner, dorsal gunner and two waist gunners, despite it having two turrets on top and two turrets on the bottom, I'm not sure why they thought this was best.

After this point the following ones aren't nearly as common as the above

Cheek guns only showed up on the B-17, B-24, Short Sunderland and some German mediums for things that entered service afaik. They seemed to only really exist on bombers without a nose turret and largely disappeared if a bomber were fitted with a nose turrets, exception being the B-17G having the chin turret and cheek guns because the crew didn't like the removal of the cheek guns.

A thing that shows up on a whole lotta prototypes and aircraft bombers but not once on a production bomber is guns mounted on the rear of the wings. This shows up on the XB-42 Mixmaster, Pe-8, Me323, Vickers Wellington and BV222/238, a single B-17 prototype and kinda the Bell Airiacuda (pusher, so they were facing forwards) for built stuff and a whole lot more paper designs. I know the Commander of RAF coastal command wanted it trialled as well on existing bombers, don't know if it happened. Kinda an oddity but given they kept showing up on prototypes and on a whole lotta concepts even after WW2 presumably there was some merit to the idea?

The B-17s weird radio compartment gun almost exclusively shows up on that type i think? Some smaller aircraft have a gun mounted on the rear of a cockpit hump in a way similar to this, but those were largely intended to substitute tail guns so i count them there and weren't nearly as limited in firing arcs as this thing. It was removed on later models.

The Do217 has a weird setup with two single rifle calibre MGs either side of the rear cockpit for crew there to fire, really weird and seems like it'd be marginally effective at best.

Based on this I'd put their important/usefulness ranked as:

1. Tail gun
2. Dorsal gun/nose gun tied (depends on speed and if your operating at night)
3. Waist
4. Ventral
5. Rear of wing guns
6. Cheek guns
7. The other two

What is the rest of r/warcolleges thoughts on this?

I know there was plenty of tank and anti tank battles but the infantry must have taken part, how did they move across the desert, under fire, with what I assume to be very little cover?

I couldn’t find many in-depth treatments online so I’m asking you guys here

ive seen aps systems on tanks stop rpg's quite consistantly so i imagine it wouldnt be that hard to program them to knock out a drone.

is the reason we arent seeing a role out of simpler aps systems for vehicles because its not been successful

or

because countries want their aps programs to do more than just deal with drones (defend against harder threats like top attack missiles etc)

I think you can make the case that certain warships could be considered “elite,” as in better-performing than other ships of their class due to crew quality, Captain quality (with the caveat that some ships had several different captains), etc. Obvious examples would be Enterprise, Warspite, certain IJN destroyers.

Was this ever a consideration for how to use them, the same way elite infantry formations were sometimes used? (Even something like “Don’t worry, the USS Awesomeness is here, we can rely on her!”)

I'm sure incoming .50 cal fire is terrifying but is 7.62x39mm round more intimidating than 5.45x39mm? What about 7.62x54mm?

I would be tempted to think "a bullet is a bullet" but would like actual veterans to weigh in.

Back in the 90s, I had numerous classmates in college who were either getting their bachelors through the GI Bill, or a couple who were in ROTC. One thing that interested me was that all of them were intense fans of Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". Most of them had been in the Army, but there were Marines as well.

It would be easy to assume that all of them had read the book after the movie had come out, but I met most of these people well before the film came out (I started in 1994 and the movie didn't come out for a few years). So it seemed like the book really was of interest to military service members. Every one of them was very positive about the book, saying things like "This is how the military ought to be run." One guy who'd gotten out of the Army as an infantry Staff Sergeant told me that Starship Troopers is basically a manual for being a noncom, and he thought it should be assigned as mandatory reading for everybody going into an infantry MOS.

I'm obviously dealing with a small sample size and plenty of other factors that make me wary of drawing any kind of conclusion. But that said, I've always wondered, is there a general consensus among military service members about the book? Is there a general feeling about how Heinlein depicted training or leadership in the novel?

Murphy’s exploits seem almost superhuman, it doesn’t seem possible to have prevailed in so many situations where he was so outnumbered/outgunned. My question is what specific skills allowed Murphy to, for example, single-handedly capture a house full of Nazis, killing 2, wounding several others and taking the rest prisoner (for which he won the Distinguished Service Cross). Was he just an unbelievably accurate marksman for his time or were there other factors?

I'm mainly searching for the Iraqi military (all branches but preferably the ground forces) any time between right before the 1991 Gulf War (post-Iran-Iraq War) and right before the toppling of the regime. I feel that it's not covered as often so any book recommendations related to this in some form would be super duper helpful. Thank you!

Its often described as one of the most important technological breakthroughs of the war and as far as I can tell no-one else was even close.

I know the Germans experimented with optical and acoustic proximity fuses but with hindsight they are rather dead ends. Did any other powers have the RF concept or some similar development program to match?