quartermaster jim

QUARTERMASTER JIM

Most people have this history tale in their heads that ever since gunpowder was invented, there was a linear progression towards today's pinnacle of greatness, automatic fire from lightweight weapons. Then, they confuse need with want, want with necessity and necessity with invention. In other words, they confuse tactical considerations with those of logistics. Because evidently logistics are no more complicated than clicking on my Amazon links and buying however much you need with debt notes. Sadly, for me especially as I rely on that Amazon commission to eat, logistics isn't that easy. Nor sustainable.

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Gunpowder was invented by the Chinese long before Europe got hold of it for its own nefarious purposes. They made plenty of gunpowder, and used it in fireworks, mainly. This wasn't because China was some kind of amateur in war. Anyone ever heard of Sun Tzu? Do you notice them wasting billions on aircraft carriers today ( an obsolete weapons platform, unless you need to bomb uppity colonists from off shore, leaving the Marines to guard the oil and poppy fields )? China has been around longer than almost anyone else, and it isn't just because of renewable agricultural nutrients.

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( No, I don't mean humans crapping in the rice fields. Rather, river borne and wind carried minerals to replenish soils denuded by overpopulation pressures. Egypt had the same advantage, but they were too vulnerable due to the single source river. China has a more dispersed geography ) It is because they do things right more often than wrong. Look at us, resource rich and we pissed it all away. You need material AND brains, not just one or the other.

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China had no pressing continuous warfare forcing them to adapt gunpowder weaponry. They could contract and expand, losing ground or winning it, without their existence threatened. European nations did not have that luxury. It was get big or get eaten ( China has retained its size primarily through culture rather than militarily. Sending starving citizens abroad becomes a military asset ). Now, here is where colonization comes in. Europe was FORCED to colonize, as to Go Big, you need population they couldn't feed ( France usually exempted ) and cannon you also could not feed.

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My personal theory on why China didn't utilize gunpowder weapons was that not only did she not need to, it would have been difficult. For both farming and gunpowder, you need nitrates. China chose to use hers to grow food. Europe chose gunpowder. China could consolidate territorial control, using manpower instead of gunpowder, Europe was forced to expand territory, replacing men with machines ( early robotics ). We as survivalists tend to focus too heavily on the micro view. The bigger picture can become obscured. We think in terms of gunpowder rifles. Europe needed artillery.

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Infantry is only there to protect the bigger weapons ( except in times the nations were far too resource poor, and then infantry reined supreme ). Europe needed cannon, lots of it, on land as well as on sea ( to protect land assets but more importantly to protect and defeat their overseas colonies ). They also needed Big Money to go with Big Armies and Big Navies, and therein is your capitalism. It was always there to meet the needs of the state, not the market. Lots of cannon needed lots of nitrates. Cannon is MUCH hungrier than peasant armies.

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Nitrates form much better in more abundance tropically than in northern wet climes ( even artificial nitrate mining to replace the scarce outhouse sources was not enough, not for both cannon and farmland ). Britain learned from the pioneering mistakes of the Portuguese and the Dutch and secured empire primarily from securing better nitrates production, funded by a better banking system. And until WWI ( AFTER its imperial demise economically ), it's army was small with its navy and her cannon supreme. It was a feedback loop in all its glory.

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Here is my point. Small arms did not secure her an empire, her navy did. Not to diminish the part of land forces. Someone needs to secure the ports, and a handful of Marines are not going to cut it ( anyone else notice how most times the marines are severely underfunded and equipped, forcing them to substitute elan for resources? The Imperial Japanese had the same constraints. How did that work out for them? Just saying ). In the big picture, an infantryman's rifle means about as much as dingus or squat. It simply doesn't win battles, let alone wars.

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Infantry has always been the red headed stepchild of the military. Don't misunderstand, they have all of my respect. They usually suffer the most and perform miracles. But as far as resources, they don't matter as much. Again, they are just there to secure equipment. They are security guards, just as under trained and under equipped as their government can get away with ( just like actual guards and their corporate masters ). The government simply does NOT care about their equipment. The infantryman's rifle is just as much as the government needs, and his consideration isn't important.

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The M1 Garand wasn't The Greatest Battle Implement Ever Devised because it benefited the soldiers. It was designed in the 1920's but manufactured in the early '30's more than likely simply as a Great Depression government stimulus project. We had a lot of unemployed, and a huge amount of resources and a semi-auto was expensive and used extra ammunition. At the time, that was exactly what was needed, because we had a surplus of resources. Before that time, the primary consideration with a vastly smaller sized army, was NOT wasting resources. Marksmanship above all, to preserve ammo and to stay in budget.

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Did the Army care about the troops welfare? Certainly not. It only cared about the soldiers using the weapons IT wanted, not the soldiers prefereances. Good Christ On A Skateboard, did everyone here who served completely forget how crappy their equipment was, and how little your branch of service cared what you thought? Introducing semi-automatic weapons did the troops absolutely ZERO favors, as resupply now never caught up with the required new tactics of spray and pray ( does anyone remember the bayonet fighting in the early days of Iraq? That wasn't by choice. Not to say you ALWAYS run out of ammo, just that once is probably enough ).

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Did the Germans listen to the Russian Front troops and discover they all preferred submachineguns to their Mausers? Perhaps, as the German army usually fights smarter rather than harder. But the primary impetus behind the assault carbine was lack of industry and resource contraction. The research was about cheaper firearms using less resources and shrinking the amount of materials needed in an ammunition cartridge. Did the two Resource Rich superpowers take that concept and run with it?

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Sure, but with the caveat that they were looking to arm MORE troops, and so resources, although not lacking, stretched further to supply far more. Battle Rifles and Assault Carbines were about quantity over quality. Again, this benefited the State, not the soldier. You grew up in a Military Industrial Complex paradigm. Wasting ammunition benefited and profited the elite of that system. It was NOT meant to benefit the individual by making them safer.

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I'll continue tomorrow from that point.

( .Y. )

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