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Sometimes a “good enough” military technology can achieve victory over better military technologies. Such a fact probably gave very little comfort to the five-man crews of U.S. Sherman tanks who faced an uphill battle against more powerful German tanks during World War II. British tank crews gave Sherman tanks the unflattering nickname “Ronson” — a grim reference to the Ronson cigarette lighter’s ad slogan “lights first every time” and the unfortunate fact that Sherman tanks often burned after taking just one hit. But that did not stop the U.S. from supplying tens of thousands of Sherman tanks to U.S., British, Canadian and other Allied forces, tipping the scales against the smaller numbers of elite German tanks on World War II battlefields.
The armchair historian debate over the Sherman’s war legacy could blaze up once more with the new war film “Fury”, starring actor Brad Pitt as a U.S. tank commander leading a five-man Sherman crew deep within Germany in the closing days of World War II. Some historians and military history enthusiasts still scoff at the capabilities of Sherman tanks when compared with the German Panther and Tiger tanks that carried both more armor and more firepower. But the U.S. strategy of mass-producing a reliable tank in large numbers should not be underestimated, according to the book “Armored Thunderbolt: The U.S. Army Sherman in World War II” by Steven Zaloga, a military historian and senior analyst at the Teal Group Corporation. The tale of the Sherman tank’s road to victory represents a history lesson with implications for the future of warfare.
“In battle, quantity has a quality all its own,” Zaloga writes. “Warfare in the industrial age requires a careful balance between quality and quantity.”
“Overwhelming adversaries through greater numbers is a viable strategy for technology competition, and was used successfully by the United States in World War II,” writes Paul Scharre, a fellow at CNAS, in a preview for the new report titled “Robotics on the Battlefield Part II: The Coming Swarm.” ( http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNAS_TheComingSwarm_Scharre.pdf )
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/lovesick-cyborg/2014/10/16/good-enough-us-tanks-won-wwii/#5465
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 13 2014, @07:18AM
The problem is: If you plan to outnumber your enemy with robots that have a higher per-unit cost than your enemy's entire army, you might run into funding issues.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Thursday November 13 2014, @07:47AM
We're printing the bills as fast as we can, sir!
Here are some dies. Make a couple hundred of these coins by 5.
But these are for a billion dollar coin!
Fine. Make a couple thousand.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 13 2014, @09:04AM
The humans will always win, because the generals will just send wave after wave of their men against the robots until they reach their preset kill limits, and shut down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 13 2014, @04:51PM
overflowed int?
(Score: 3, Funny) by M. Baranczak on Thursday November 13 2014, @06:33PM
Yeah, the evil robot lord thought he could do it on the cheap, and used the free trial version.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 13 2014, @02:00PM
I think that's kind of the point. They're basically saying the US/allied strategy in WWII was a zerg rush. Germany only had a population of ~40M. The US population was ~130M. We threw a bunch of cheap, lower tech, lower strength forces at their limited, higher tech forces, and buried them under a wall of manpower.
Now, the US is on the other side, trying to use tech and money to counter numbers.