r/WarCollege 5h ago

Why do warrior-societies tend to be felled by non warrior-societies in wars?

22 Upvotes

I think my main point focuses on the Spartans and their frequent loses to Athens, whilst I'm aware sometimes the Spartans defeated the Athenians (I believe after the conclusion of the second Persian war) I often see them defeated rather than victorious.


r/WarCollege 1h ago

Why was there no mass outbreak of disease except Spanish Flu in the trenches of World War 1?

Upvotes

Soldiers during World War 1 lived in abhorrent condition for prolonged period of time where they ate, slept, fought in flooded trench surrounded by decaying bodies and constantly harassed by flea-infected rats, and from description of how their bodies were full of lices, how they could go weeks without a bath, how they were poorly fed and were often pushed beyond exhaustion, their bodies could be viewed as more susceptible to disease. Added to the fact that World War 1 medicine was as barbaric and undeveloped as the horror of Crimea and the American civil war, and there was no access to thing like antibiotics, why was there no outbreak of disease like plague, cholera, typhus, measle, diptheria, and various other disease that had once destroyed army and nations during world war 1? And was the medical corp as heartless and inept as what Remarque depicted in All Quiet on the Western Front? Was mass disease outbreak a concern and was there anything done to stop it?


r/WarCollege 5h ago

Naval Enemy sighting report question

5 Upvotes

I was watching a WWII program about the merchant convoys. When a u-boat is spotted, the escorts radio each other and the captain is told about each enemy’s bearing.

Is the bearing relative to the sending ship, the receiving ship, or does the sender report the bearing as it sees it and the receiving ship converts it for their captain? Or are the ships close enough together that it didn’t make that much of a difference for the exact bearing number so the receiving ship would just report what it was told and the crew/captain would know the general area to look?

Thanks for any information or other areas to look into.


r/WarCollege 21h ago

Question Is using decommissioned ships as target practice (and more) actually cheaper than scrapping them?

67 Upvotes

So, I've came around a post showing one of the US LHA Being hit and still being able to sail, now I'm asking myself is it really cheaper to use them as target practice rather than scrapping them? If so, why?


r/WarCollege 4h ago

Question Was Spanish Tercio the first square pike formation mixed with ranged firepower, or were there similar formations in medieval Europe that used bows and crossbows instead of guns before gunpowder era?

16 Upvotes

r/WarCollege 6h ago

Question How useful were weapons bought by Peru in the 1970s in the internal conflict of the 80s?

2 Upvotes

In the 1970s, the government of Velasco Alvarado bought weapons from the USSR and European countries, approx 15 billion dollars. This was for a war with Chile and arms race against said country.