Why Btonze Age?

[Gawdzilla]

The biggest mistake an army can make is to prepare to fight the last war rather than the next war.

Which was one of the major advantages the German had at the start of WWII. Their old military elites gone and the necessity to rethink their whole strategy.

They're whole military establishment was gone, but lots of veterans from the first phase of the 20th C. European Civil War were still around, like Admiral Lutjens.

[Anomalocaris]

It just came to me.  The Renault ZT.  2-man crew, machine gun armed.  Generally exterminated during the Battle of France.

It was in the same class as Pzkfw I.

In 1941, the worst tanks the French deployed was not really worse than the worst the Germans deployed. The bulk of French tanks were better armed and protected than their German counterparts, while the best French tanks were overwhelmingly superior to the best the Germans had.

[Minimalist]

No argument.  I just knew they had one and was pissed that the name didn't come to me.

[Anomalocaris]

All armored vehicles are infantry support, even today Abaris.  If it cant haul my ruck it's fucking worthless.   

Armor and mechanized infantry are complementary.   So in this sense they are muturally supporting.  

But the role of infantry dramatically changed because of tanks.   Mechanized infantry wouldn't do much of what they do but for a world made possible by tanks,  so in that sense much of modern mechanized infantry exists to support tanks.

[Anomalocaris]

But designed for different purposes and employed for different purposes. Also, and that's the point I'm trying to make, the allies at the start of WWII still fought WWI, whereas the Germans fought WWII right from the start. The secret for their early successes.

The biggest mistake an army can make is to prepare to fight the last war rather than the next war.

I disagree.  Throughout history more armies have lost through failure to learn the lessons of the last war than through failure to anticipate the conditions of the next one.   Admittedly since 1870s the widespread adaptation of the general staff system gave modern armies something of an advantage compare to armies from before that time in terms of systematically digesting lessons of past wars, but there are still many blatant examples of modern armies failing to learn the lessons of the last war.

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[Minimalist]

How much did technology change between 1870 and 1815? 

How much has it changed between 1870 and today?

[JuliaL]

Anticipating the next conflict is very difficult and extremely expensive if you try to cover all possibilities.

In Iraq, IEDs were eventually countered by MRAPS.  It's debatable whether this was predictable.  

Will the next conflict be fought with suppression of air defenses via fighter bombers or via swarming drones?

IDK.

[Anomalocaris]

How much did technology change between 1870 and 1815? 

How much has it changed between 1870 and today?

An army that failed to learn the lessons of the last war is unlikely to be able clearly assess how technological progress impacts sound military practice at all levels. Such an army may talk big on a high level as if it's thinking was advanced. But I think it is unlikely to succeed in a real war because its operations would grind to a halt from unresolved problems at multiple levels.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Hey, Polish cavalry attacked the German in 1939.

It was ineffective.

The Germans had cavalry too in WWII. But the horses no longer served as chargers. They only served as means of transportion for the soldiers to dismount when action started. But they were still called cavalry. As far as I know, even the US forces found it hard to let go of the tradition. Weren't or aren't there still units being called cavalry, although there are no longer horses but copters involved?

The last cavalry charge in American history happened in the Japanese invasion of the Phillipines.

[Anomalocaris]

The soviets used sizeable cavalry forces for scouting and for mobile shock force where conventional wheeled or tracked vehicles had a hard time throughout WWII. The soviets used cavalry charges effectively in the pursuit stages of the battle against routed and fleeing German units once the main German front was broken by soviet mechanized forces. The soviets almost certainly launched fairly sizeable real horse cavalry charges as late as 1945.  

The Germans also used both German and Cossack horse mounted cavalry for anti-partisan operations in yogoslavia and on the eastern front. Throughout WWII, much of the supply of the German army from the railhead to frontline troop was pulled by horses despite German reputation for mechanization. In fact, one of the main reason why Germans never used chemical warfare during 1943-1945, despite the fact chemical warfare warfare would have theoretically given tremendous advantage to the defensive side, was the fact the Germans never managed to produce an effective gas mask for horses, and resorting the chemical warfare would have killed all the horses that the German army depended on for logistics.

The US actually deployed real horse mounted special forces in Afghanistan in 2001.   Horses can still be more mobile than any wheeled or tracked vehicles in mountainous terrain.